


In a Land of Prats and a Time of Zombies

by jinkandtherebels



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Character Death, Fusion, Gen, M/M, Warm Bodies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-16
Updated: 2014-08-16
Packaged: 2018-02-13 10:10:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 54,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2146806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jinkandtherebels/pseuds/jinkandtherebels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Em may not remember his own name, but he likes to think he's a pretty nice guy. Aside from the whole eating-people thing. Unfortunately Arthur, who has been trained specifically to blow the heads off zombies, doesn't share this view of things. (Warm Bodies fusion)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [В Засранцев царстве в Зомби государстве](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12923988) by [AOrvat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AOrvat/pseuds/AOrvat)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god, IT'S DONE! I can finally say I've contributed to this fandom now...
> 
> Thank you a hundred times to my amazing artist, thewinchesterswagger, both for your incredible art and for putting up with my clueless self! Thank you a hundred more times to story_monger, Beta Extraordinaire, and camelittle, Britpicker of Awesome; you guys are wonderful and any remaining mistakes are mine. And thank you to the After Camlann mods for hosting this awesome thing, I'm so happy I got to participate!

[](http://tinypic.com?ref=2py85e0)

_._

**_Chapter One_ **

**__ **

_._

_It looks like I’ve managed to piss someone off, which is really just par for the course. It’s all angry words and bright blue eyes and I’m not sure what exactly is being said, only that I’m giving as good as I get._

_Somehow the angry spark turns into one of amusement, laughter gradually replacing the sneers, and I leave feeling like something odd and brilliant has happened. Like we’re friends._

_He smiles before he walks away._

_His teeth are crooked, but I don’t really notice that. I’m too busy wondering. And probably grinning like an idiot._

_I’ll find him again, I decide. I’ll find him right after I…right after…_

_What was I in such a hurry for, again?_

_Oh. Right._

_I’m hungry, too hungry to think straight, but it’s not a hunger for anything I can name, nothing that makes sense, except—_

_I’ll never see him again, because the world went to hell and making friends became the last thing on my mind._

_Right. I’m dreaming. This is a dream because I’m dead, and the dead do not smile at strangers. They eat them._

_Or maybe this is nothing at all because everyone knows that the dead don’t dream._

_The knowledge settles into me again; the images start to fade away before I so much as open my eyes. By the time I do, I don’t think I’ll remember any of this._

_When all’s said and done…maybe that’s for the best._

.

Em isn’t a monster. He’s just like everybody else.

At least, that’s what he tells himself. It’s a hard thing to remember when you have your teeth buried in someone’s frontal lobe.

Okay, so maybe he is a monster. Technically speaking. But at least he feels bad about it; that has to count for something, right?

There are a lot of things like that, things he likes to tell himself so he can sleep at night. Not that he couldn’t go for ages without sleep, because what is it going to do, kill him?—but that’s morbid, and he should probably stop.

Right, so: Other things he likes to tell himself. He might not remember his own name, but Em likes to think he’s a pretty decent guy. Minus the whole eating-people thing. Which, to be fair, he can’t exactly help. Nobody can. And nobody can remember how they ended up this way, either, so there’s not much chance of working out a cure.

Or maybe they do remember. Maybe everyone except for him is walking around with detailed knowledge of how to bring the dead back to life locked inside their heads, and it would all come out easy as anything if he had the words to ask. If they had the words to tell him.

He doesn’t, and they don’t, and it’s a long shot anyway, so he doesn’t think about it too much.

.

He wakes up in his jet and he’s alone again. Which only makes sense, really. He’s not sure why he wouldn’t be.

_Well_ , he thinks, looking at the serpentine eyes hovering near the ceiling. _Alone except for the dragons, anyway_.

He’s hungry, which is not something that’s good to ignore, so Em tugs on the little lever to make his seat jolt upright again and drags himself to his feet. The dragons all stare at him, and he fancies that if he were still human he might feel their gazes boring into him from all angles. He’s amassed quite a few of them—figurines, bookends, stuffed ones, a mobile he’d managed to rig up to the roof of the cabin so that now it drifts there, delicate and eerie and nowhere near as menacing as its legendary counterparts. He even has a dragon mug, out of which he’d really love to drink tea if he still liked tea. It’s a pretty impressive collection at this point. He’s proud of it.

He brushes his fingers stiffly against his favorite as he walks by; it’s a rough wooden carving he keeps on the armrest nearest to what was, in another life, the plane’s emergency exit. He couldn’t tell you why it’s his favorite, only that it is.

There’s…well, there’s a lot of things Em couldn’t tell you. Not least of all because he can’t actually speak. It’s really frustrating, which makes him think that maybe he couldn’t shut up when he was alive or something, because there are so many things he wants to say at any given time. Usually because he’s thought of some stupid joke and wants to share it—only he can’t, and it wouldn’t matter if he could. If he could, he’d still be human, and if he were still human, he would’ve been eaten by now.

As it is, he thinks, staggering slowly across the asphalt to the airport, he’s the one doing the eating. And, well, maybe that’s better? He’s evolved or some shit like that. He’s adapted. And it doesn’t even make him a bad person necessarily, because this is the new age, where _not_ eating people’s brains makes you the odd one out.

Right. Filed under: Things Em Likes to Tell Himself So That He Can Sleep at Night (Not That It Would Matter If He Couldn’t).

Heathrow’s electricity lasted for a bit longer than the rest of the area, but it’s still been out for a while now, so Em uses the escalator like a staircase. It took practice at first, figuring out how to angle limbs stiff with rigor mortis so that he could actually move down one step at a time instead of taking them all at once and ending up a pile of broken bones. That would suck a lot, he thinks, considering he’d still be…well, _existing_ and all. Just not able to move. He’d rather not find out what that’s like.

Anyway, he’s mastered the whole escalator thing now, even if there’s still something off-putting about going down an escalator that’s not moving at all. He just grips the railing tightly and keeps his movements jerky and quick.

A mumble from his left makes Em glance over. It’s a familiar face, but then again, they pretty much all are at this point. Dred is a little boy with sleek dark hair who likes to haunt what used to be the up escalator. He’s wearing a dirty school uniform with a nametag that’s mostly worn off; only a couple of letters are still legible, which is how Em learned his name. Or something close to it.

“Hullo, Dred,” is what he tries to say.

“Hnnnngkk” is what actually comes out of his mouth. Oh well. This is the problem with trying to form words on the fly. Em’s not actually terrible at speech, considering, but he needs to plan out the words and then concentrate carefully. Otherwise it just ends up sounding like…well, that.

Not that Dred seems to care either way. He just looks at Em with those wide, frost blue eyes of his like he always does. Coming from a little kid it’s more than a little unnerving, even for someone who’s already dead, and Em finds himself navigating the steps a bit faster.

The security guard with the floppy brown hair—one of their more recent arrivals—is pacing back and forth at the foot of the escalator with a determined look on his face. Em wonders what he was so determined about, sometimes, but he knows better than to ask. He waves instead, more a halfhearted twitch of the arm than anything but at least, he tells himself, he’s _trying_.

The security guard doesn’t even glance Em’s way, so he keeps shuffling along.

He finds who he’s looking for by the luggage carousel, which isn’t exactly a surprise. One of the strange things about becoming a member of the undead (aside from, you know, the obvious) is that it apparently turns everyone into creatures of habit. Excruciatingly boring habit. Not that Em supposes he’s any kind of exception.

So, the luggage carousel. Will’s always there, mindlessly sweeping the same two square feet of space with a broom so filthy Em privately thinks it’s only making matters worse. Will liked to watch the bags go round and round once, and even though the power’s been out for ages he still likes to wait and stare by the carousel, like he’s trying to get it going again through sheer force of will.

Em tries to call his name. It comes out a grunt. _Damn_.

Still, Will seems to hear him. He turns around slowly, the broom’s motions stopping as he concentrates on this one movement. Em watches him look down at his janitor’s uniform, blinking at his name embroidered into the grey-green fabric with unfocused eyes. _Lucky Will_ , Em sometimes thinks of him. Lucky for having been born with a one-syllable name that even death couldn’t do much to scrub away. He might have resented him for it if Will weren’t the closest thing to a best friend he has in this brave new world of theirs.

Unfortunately his best friend isn’t exactly a fantastic conversationalist. Understandable. So Em tries really hard to get his point across. It takes an embarrassingly long time trying to form that one all-important word, trying to get his mouth and tongue and whatever’s left of his brain to cooperate, but Will just stands there. It’s not like he’s got anything better to be doing, Em reminds himself, and finally manages to spit the word out like a broken tooth:

“Foood?”

In what Em thinks is an impressive show of finesse, he even manages to drag the last half of the syllable upwards to make it resemble an invitation. Because really, being dead is no excuse for having no manners.

Will doesn’t seem to share his opinion because he’s looking at Em like he thinks he’s an idiot. Em isn’t especially offended, seeing as that’s basically Will’s default expression at any given time. He sometimes wonders if Will died scowling, and now his facial muscles are frozen that way, but he’s pretty sure it’d be rude to ask. It all goes back to the manners thing. He doesn’t bring it up, instead waiting patiently while Will processes the request.

Eventually he gets his reply in the form of a short, jerky nod. Will’s mouth opens and contorts, then closes again, until finally he jerks his head toward the general undead populace milling about the floor.

It’s not much to go on, but they’ve done this often enough that Em gets the message. He grunts an assent, turns around and starts shuffling in the other direction. They’ll both round up a handful of others in the mood for similarly fast food (see what he did there? Em thinks he comes up with comedic gold; too bad he can’t share it with anyone) and head off to the last city. Which will take somewhere in the vicinity of for-bloody-ever, because speed is not an achievement easily unlocked when you turn into a zombie, but Em supposes that’s an upside of being dead—you don’t really feel the need to rush anymore.

_See_ , Em tells himself, listening to Will shuffle listlessly away. _I’m not a monster. I’m not any different from anybody else_.

Semantics, maybe. When everyone around you is a monster too, does that make it okay? Or does it just mean there’s a shitton of monsters in the world?

Em thinks it over for about a second.

Then he shrugs and keeps walking. He’s too hungry to be thinking right now.


	2. Chapter 2

.

**_Chapter Two_ **

**_ _ **

.

Arthur keeps his face carefully blank while his father speaks. It might be just a prerecorded video—hell, it might even be a stock tape Uther keeps on hand for whenever he feels a pep talk is needed—but still. It’s not just Uther he needs to impress right now, needs to stay calm and collected for.

“Despite the losses we have all suffered, we cannot afford to give in to our grief,” Uther is saying on the projector screen. Morgana snorts to Arthur’s left, not even bothering to try and hide it, and Arthur has to tamp down the instinctive urge to call her out on it.

 _It wouldn’t do any good_ , he tells himself, jaw clenching. They’ve had about fifty variations of the same argument over their shared father, most of those during the last few months, and not a one had done a damn thing for either of them except shut Morgana down even more. That and make Arthur throw things at various walls. He’s getting tired of it.

But apparently his sister isn’t going to be content with unladylike noises today.

“Yes, Uther,” she says under her breath. “Please do tell us how much _you_ suffered over La—”

Arthur elbows her sharply. Without missing a beat or glancing his way she reaches over and pinches the offending arm, hard and with her _nails_ , the vindictive harpy. His eyes water.

Trying to move his lips as little as possible, he hisses out of the corner of his mouth, “Morgana, that’s _enough_.”

“I disagree, dear brother,” she says quietly. “It’s not nearly enough.”

But she keeps her snide comments to herself after that, so Arthur decides to count it as a victory.

Since he’s already lost the thread of whatever his father is talking about (and if he’s honest with himself, Arthur knows he could recite Uther’s probable main points from memory—his father is many things, but a creative speaker isn’t exactly one of them), Arthur looks down a few places in their stone-faced line to Gwen. She might as well be wearing a mask for all the outward expression being shown, but someone who knows her well enough can see the tightening around her eyes and mouth. Angry or upset; Arthur can’t quite pinpoint which. Probably both. Considering.

Losing Lance had been hard on all of them—on Arthur, who’d lost his friend; on the rest of his patrol, who had lost their brother-in-arms; but most of all on Gwen. None of them know all of the details, not even in this rat’s nest of a compound where it’s borderline impossible to keep secrets, but it was hard not to notice when their ever-practical teammates had started wearing simple silver bands on their ring fingers.

Gwen stopped wearing hers after Lance’s surveillance patrol was wiped out. A month running and she still hasn’t said anything about it—hasn’t said much at all, really—and Arthur hasn’t been able to find the words to ask.

He realizes he’s staring and snaps his gaze forward again, trying to gauge how much more ‘pep talk’ they’re going to have to stomach before his father lets them go out and do their job.

Luckily, they seem to be nearing the end: “Never forget that you are our last line of defense against the creatures that try to destroy us,” Uther says with all of his considerable gravity. “Each of you is vital. We may be the last of our kind living—so make your own lives count.”

The video ends, fizzing out into static, and Arthur lets out a breath. He looks down the line and decides to forgo any pep talk of his own. Going by the looks on their faces, they’ve had quite enough of that for one day.

“All right,” he says instead. “Get your gear. We move out in ten.”

There are nods and then the little group starts to disperse, but Arthur manages to catch Morgana’s eye before she goes off who-knows-where. Her mouth tightens a little, but she follows him as he ducks into a corner away from most prying eyes.

“If you’re going to tell me off, you can save your breath,” she says before he can get out so much as a syllable. Typical.

“What the hell was that all about?” he demands, ignoring the order. “As if everyone isn’t on edge enough without you pulling that shit in public—”

“ _On edge_?” she repeats, scathing. “Oh, very diplomatic of you. They’re grieving, Arthur. All of them, even you, even if you’re too repressed to figure it out. They _loved_ Lance. And then Uther sits there and pretends to give a damn when he didn’t say a _word_ to Gwen after—”

“‘They’?” Arthur interrupts, because he’d rather focus on that than on his father’s selective empathy. “Is there something I’m missing, or did you not lose him too?”

Morgana stops short, looking for all the world like he’s slapped her. There’s something unbearably lost in it, and even if he does spend a ludicrous amount of time these days wishing he could make some kind of a crack in her diamond-hard exterior, now that he’s managed it Arthur is regretting trying.

He was the one who convinced her to talk to Gaius after he saw the marks on her wrists. It was over a year ago now, but there are things you don’t forget even when the world crashes down around your ears, and clumsily trying to talk your sister down from a ledge is one of them. She’d reminded him of broken glass then, all sharp edges and biting words, but her eyes—they’d been as flat as those of any deadwalker.

Even in the increasingly unlikely event that Arthur makes it to old age, he’s never going to forget that look.

He opens his mouth to apologize, but she steamrolls right over whatever he would have said.

“It’s not the same for me,” she says in a brittle voice. “And you know why? It’s because Lance was just one more.” A laugh tears its way out of her throat, sounding rusty, like it’s just one step away from becoming a sob. “He wasn’t the first person we lost, he isn’t going to be the last, and I can’t—I’m numb to it now, Arthur. I don’t remember how to grieve properly anymore. Most days I don’t even remember why we’re bothering to fight.”

“To keep everyone alive,” Arthur snaps, but Morgana fires back.

“We’re not _living_ here, Arthur. We’re surviving. And there’s a difference, dear brother, believe me.”

She says it like she’s daring him to fight her on it, and once the shock wears off he damn well plans to—but then Leon makes his way over.

“Arthur?” he says, tentative. He knows he’s just wandered into a minefield, but he’s also more devoted to the job than most, so he keeps going. “We’re ready when you two are.”

“We were just having a little chat,” Morgana tells him before Arthur can say anything (and that’s starting to seem like their entire relationship in a nutshell, Morgana saying her piece and not giving him half a chance to say his). “We’re finished now.”

Her voice is too bright and paired with a smile that looks more like a snarl, but if Leon notices he doesn’t question it. He glances toward Arthur.

Arthur isn’t about to have a shouting match with his sister in front of his oldest teammate and, once they’d both reached full volume, probably half the city. He nods, trying to look as though he’s still in control when he’s starting to feel like anything but, and walks past both of them toward the massive front gates.

He doesn’t try to meet Morgana’s eyes. There’ll be a time and place to pick up this argument right where they left off, but it isn’t going to be here or now.

Gwen and Percy are already just outside the gates, the latter joking around with Gwaine, who’s stationed on watch duty and probably will be for the foreseeable future if Arthur’s father has anything to say about it.

“Princess,” Gwaine greets him, grinning. “Morgana.”

Arthur’s pretty sure his eye twitches at the nickname, but he magnanimously ignores it. Morgana smirks.

“Uther still keeping you on a short leash?” she asks sweetly.

Gwaine winces. “No patrol duty for another month,” he answers. “I’m going stir-crazy here. Do me a favor, you come across any deadwalkers out there, bring them back my way? Otherwise I’m like to shoot myself from boredom.”

“We’ll be sure to keep that in mind,” Percy deadpans.

“Arthur,” Leon says pointedly.

Arthur clears his throat. “We’ll see what we can do about your entertainment, Gwaine,” he says, and then looks to the rest of the group. “Let’s get moving.”

“Come back now, you hear?” Gwaine calls at their backs. He’s going for levity, but there’s a definite note of real worry under it. Gwaine hasn’t missed a patrol since he was old enough to fire a gun, but shortly after they’d lost Lance he’d made some…well, some frankly Morgana-ish comments within earshot of Uther. Now he’s essentially chained to a desk, albeit one that still allows him to carry around big guns, and Arthur knows watching the rest of them head off into the unknown has to be some special kind of hell.

He lifts a hand in farewell but doesn’t turn around. He trained himself out of turning back for last looks a long time ago; if he’s going to die he’ll try to die well, but he’d rather not jinx the issue if he can avoid it.


	3. Chapter 3

.

**_Chapter Three_ **

**_ _ **

.

The walk to the city _does_ take for-bloody-ever, and while Em would like to think that’s because it’s far away from Heathrow, he’s glumly aware that death has completely fucked up any speed the lot of them might’ve had when they were still breathing. Never mind, you know, the ability to walk at anything faster than a halfhearted trudge. Even the athletically inclined aren’t much better off, and Em has a gut feeling that he wasn’t really one of those to begin with.

The boneys are fast enough—scary fast when they want to be—but losing your mind and whatever’s left of your morals doesn’t appeal to Em enough to make that trade.

So, halfhearted trudging it is.

He’s not sure how long it’s been, whether they’re halfway there or if they just set out five minutes ago, but all of a sudden his gut clenches, something primal in him giving a vicious tug.

He turns to Will and to the others, can tell from their faces that they’re feeling it too.

“Foood,” Em says, knowing even as he forces the word out that it’s not necessary.

Will’s too distracted even to give him the ‘you’re an idiot’ look, which probably means he’s gone without eating for too long. And this—this is practically a _gift_ , all things considered. Em can’t remember when they set out but he can still tell they’re nowhere near the city (the real city, the city full of live ones, not this ghost town they’re wandering through now), nowhere near close enough to pick off stragglers stupid enough to sneak past their huge walls. This is the old city, the one they all deserted in favor of a fortress hidden by scrap metal, and at this point it’s basically just a stop on the way. Sometimes the live ones come out this way for supplies, whatever they think might be left out here, but Em can only guess they’re getting better at being self-sufficient because those meals on wheels have been getting less and less frequent. Leaving the safety of the city compound is starting to become more of an act of desperation than anything else, and it’s forcing Em and his friends to go longer without eating and closer to the live ones when they do.

Life’s getting hard out here for the dead.

So finding live ones in the old city now, shit, that’s too good to be true, but Em’s starving and he’s not about to question it. Maybe later, when he’s been fed and the urge to peel off his own skin isn’t getting so fucking insistent.

Their feet drag them to a small building with shattered windows and graffiti-covered walls—pretty much par for the course in terms of curb appeal these days—that used to be a pharmacy, Em thinks. _Maybe they’re running out of meds in the compound?_

Doesn’t matter. They’re in the halls now and it gets like this sometimes, like he can’t even pay attention to the second-by-second details, like he’s running on a finite amount of energy and all of it needs to be focused on getting more, getting something to eat, something to keep him from literally tearing himself apart—to keep him somewhat close to human for just a little bit longer.

They’re at the door; it has a pane of cracked glass set into it, and through that Em can see them. Three men, two women, two of them talking—arguing?—the others gathering bottles and bandages and shoving them into bags, guns at their hips and machetes strapped to their legs, and then—

_Oh, hell._

A girl with curly hair looks up, notices them, shouts something as fear spasms across her face, and there’s much yelling and grabbing of weaponry, but Em’s willing to risk a headshot at this point and apparently Will is too because he shoves at the door and it gives way.

They stagger into the room and their hunger gives them that little extra bit of speed. It’s enough.

Well. For some of them, anyway, because a bullet takes out the pale old woman on Em’s right the second they’re through the door.

 _Headshot on the first go_ , Em thinks dimly, impressed even through his hunger-induced haze. He looks up to see who shot her.

And—

_You called me friend._

—blue eyes.

Em stops short. Which is not the smartest idea when you’re surrounded by people who want to _blow your fucking head off, right, get it together Em._

Too late, because the blond man’s face has hardened and he’s aiming the gun again, aiming to wipe Em off the face of the earth. Em barely gets his faculties in order in time to dodge and as is he feels the bullet rip through his shoulder. There’s no pain, but it’s still obnoxious. It’s never _fun_ to be shot. For a mad second Em has this urge to tell the blond guy so, but he’s already moved on to his next target.

The sounds of gunshots and shouts and snarls and everything else, this cacophony that’s unique to dead-versus-living battles, is dull and faded to Em’s ears ( _course that might have something to do with my eardrums rotting away, guess that’s always a possibility_ ). His gut is clenching again, exerting that weird pull, only he’s not sure it’s the same thing, and it’s dragging him toward the one who just shot him, like there’s some kind of magnet pulling them together—

And then he gets shot. Again.

The bullet grazes his temple this time, which is so fucking close to his brain that Em gapes.

He almost died. He almost—fuck, he almost died _properly_. For real. No do overs, no take backs, no fucking chance of feeling anything ever again or—and it pisses him off, alright? He’s not trying to excuse himself for anything, but shit if the lights very nearly going out for good doesn’t _royally_ piss him off.

When he turns around she’s looking down at him, defiant, still pointing her smoking shotgun from the height of a desk. Dark hair, green eyes, would probably be gorgeous even if Em hadn’t only had exposure to dead people for who-knows-how-long, and in that instant none of that matters. All Em can hear is that strange thick ringing in his ears, his own sluggish mind struggling to comprehend that this girl almost wiped out whatever is left of him, and that bubbling hot _anger_.

Her eyes widen as he rushes her; she’s reloading the shotgun, but his speed takes her by surprise and she isn’t fast enough to get another shot off before Em rams into the desk she’s standing on. She stumbles, but he thinks she might’ve been able to get her balance back if he didn’t grab a denim-clad leg and wrench her down to his level.

She doesn’t scream, not when she hits the floor, not when the back of her head connects with the tile and makes a sickening crunching sound.

And Em…Em is so far gone, so fucking hungry, but something in him still hesitates when he gets on his knees next to her, hands on either side of her face, getting slick with blood—when he meets her eyes, blazing and furious but not showing him any hint of fear. There’s something else there instead, something he can’t pin down in the heat of the moment.

(Later he’ll look back on it and think maybe, just maybe, it was relief. But maybe that’s just another lie he likes to tell himself.)

It’s almost like she’s daring him, like this is some kind of challenge— _do it,_ those eyes say. _If you’re going to do it, then do it_.

He wrenches her head to the side and hears her neck snap, sees the light abruptly bleed out of her eyes, leaving them dark, and that just feels wrong somehow. More wrong than anything else.

No time to think on that now. He’s got a job to do, the itch under his skin roaring into a fire that’s licking him from the inside out, shutting down whatever makes him Em and leaving nothing but the monster he so likes to pretend he isn’t, not all the time.

Harder still to remember that when he’s smashing a girl’s head against a hard floor, over and over again, blood spraying everywhere—he tastes it on his tongue but it’s not enough, it’s not nearly enough—trying to crack her skull, trying to get to the brain.

 _Finally_ he hears something crack, sees white bone shards protruding from the pulpy mass the back of her head has become, and he digs his fingers into the crack with embarrassing eagerness. Pulls, pulls, until the pieces give way and he can rip out a small handful of her brain.

And, see, the thing is he could just ignore it. Nibble off a few pieces of flesh she won’t need anymore and leave the brain be, and watch her wake up again as one of his fellow undead. But instead he’s gorging himself, moaning around mouthfuls of brain matter and ignoring the blood dripping down his chin—making sure she stays dead. He’s not sure which would be considered more of a mercy, and he doesn’t care. Because the first high is hitting him, slamming him backwards with the force of it—

.

_I am ten, and my father is still alive. My real father, the one who actually gave a damn about me. He watches us._

_I’ve found a stick and am playing swords with my cousin. My—_

.

“Morgana? _Morgana_!”

.

_Cousin. I am ten and Arthur is still my pain-in-the-arse cousin, not my pain-in-the-arse baby brother. We’re playing knights and princesses, or at least that’s what Arthur decides we’re playing. Fine, I say, and then when his knight shows up to rescue my princess and slay the invisible dragon, I pick up a sword of my own and fight back._

_The dragon is **mine** , I declare, and you don’t get to hurt her._

_I hit his stick with mine hard enough that it breaks with an echoing snap. His face scrunches up like he’s trying not to cry, because he’s two years younger than me and that makes him a baby still._

_Morgana, my father says gently._

_I frown. But Arthur looks upset that I’ve broken his sword so I sigh and offer him mine. He shakes his head._

_I roll my eyes. It’s a perfectly good sword, I tell him. Just take it._

_It’s not Excalibur, he says stubbornly._

_I smack him on the head with my stick and cross my arms while he yelps._

_Yes it is, I inform him. Read up on your namesake, why don’t you? King Arthur had **two** swords. Excalibur was the second one._

_Really? he asks, looking at my stick like he thinks it’s going to bite him._

_My first instinct is to bite his head off, but then I remember my father watching. And then I remember that Aunt Igraine’s only been dead a few months, and that Arthur’s lost his mother, so I should probably give him a break for now. My mother died when I was born so I might not know how losing one feels, but when Gorlois dies later this year Arthur will be the one trying to keep me together—but I don’t know about that yet. I am ten and I am trying to look after my cousin the only way I can._

_Really, I assure him, and hand over the stick—the sword. He takes it with more gravity than he’ll have when he picks up his first machete, his first shotgun, when he kills his first deadwalker; I know, because I will be there for all of those things and then some. And I’ll always remember the look on his face right now, like he’s accepting the responsibility of ages. Arthur’s always been too serious by half, I think, and that’s why he needs me around._

_Thanks, Morgs, he says with something like a smile. I shrug and search out another good stick._

_Don’t mention it, I say. Really, don’t. You’re still an obnoxious little snotrag._

_The look on his face is hilarious, and the next thing I know he’s charging at me with my own erstwhile weapon. I bring my new one up on instinct, blocking, and our sticks meet with a **crack** —_

.

Em is jerked back out of the memory of the dead girl— _Morgana_ , that’s right, that’s what the boy called her—and it takes him a second to remember where he is. What he is.

If he’s being honest with himself (which is something he generally tries to avoid as much as possible), this right here is the reason Em gets up in the morning. He might’ve ignored the hunger a long time ago without it. He might’ve ripped off his skin until the only thing left was a skeleton with the barest layer of flesh remaining, a boney, vicious and fierce and not caring at all about anything but the hunger. Given the sheer goddamn hopelessness of it all, he thinks signing out might’ve been something he’d got around to eventually. It still might be. You never know.

But this— _this_ is why he keeps eating, and it’s selfish as hell, he knows, but he can’t quit. In eating people’s brains like every cliché from every horror movie ever, he gets to experience their memories. Like stepping into a home video—sensations, emotions and all. For a few minutes at a time he gets to feel again.

He gets to remember what it felt like to be human. And it’s the only reason he hasn’t gone full-on monster yet.

The chaos has settled down in his absence, brief as it was. If Em were just a casual onlooker he’d feel pretty bad for the (not-so-) live ones. It’s really, really hard to kill something that’s already dead. Sure, half their little group ended up with bullet holes right between the eyes (or in the case of one poor bastard, a head sitting five feet away from the rest of the body), but the other half looks to be feeding pretty well. Will is merrily chomping on the abdomen of a guy built like a tree, which should keep him busy for a while.

Em stashes the rest of the brain matter on his person, wipes his mouth off with his sleeve and looks down at the dead girl one last time. Out of some really badly timed fit of sentimentality he turns her over so the mess he made of the back of her skull isn’t quite so obvious; facing the ceiling, she looks almost normal. Pretty. Definitely more at peace than she’d looked just before he’d killed her.

Well. Maybe that’s stretching it a bit.

He’s about to stand up when he notices something on her wrist. It’s a bracelet, even odds on whether it’s meant to be jewelry or some weirdly outdated armor, a thick silver band gilded generously with gold. The sight of it nudges something in him—probably the aftereffects of the memory he’s just ingested—so he pulls it off her slim white wrist and stows that in his pocket as well.

By the time he hauls himself to his feet and is considering starting the long walk back to Heathrow, Em’s almost forgotten about blue-eyes. When he stands up, though, he sees him out cold—slumped on the floor next to the body of another man holding a gun but missing half his face. Blue-eyes is bleeding sluggishly from somewhere in the back of his head.

But not dead.

Em hesitates.

 _He’s alive_ , the ever-present urge tells him helpfully. _You should eat him_.

 _No_ , he thinks back, _I’m thinking that maybe I shouldn’t. He’s—_

But what _is_ he, exactly? Just another trigger-happy live guy who thinks he’s so much better than Em just because Em is dead. Well, fuck that. He’s working himself up to a proper (if confusing) rage when the other voice kicks in.

_Kill him and I will fucking haunt you, you undead bastard._

And that one…that one definitely isn’t him. He recognizes that voice, if barely. She was yelling a few minutes ago, after all, and it’s hard to forget the details of someone who shot you.

_Oh, fuck._

_Oh fuck is right_ , Morgana says waspishly. _Now go save my stupid brother_.


	4. Chapter 4

.

**_Chapter Four_ **

**__ **

.

The last thing he remembers is Leon shoving him out of the way, his head slamming into something on the way down, and an instant of blinding pain making stars appear behind his eyes before everything was swallowed by black. His consciousness is starting to come back, if in fits and starts, and as he doesn’t appear to have been eaten Arthur’s feeling cautiously optimistic about his chances of moving again. _Small steps_ , he tells himself. _Start with a visual_.

He manages to open his eyes and immediately wishes he hadn’t.

_God **damn** it, Leon._

He lets his eyes close again, burning, but it’s too late. His last look at his oldest friend is seared into his memory now, and no amount of potential concussion is going to make it go away.

 _Fuck. **Fuck**._ He can’t mourn right now, doesn’t have that luxury. There’s a distinct fucking lack of gunshots going off, or anything else that sounds like it could mean his team is still fighting back, so Arthur has to assume the worst. Which means he’s the last one who can bring news of this back to the city. They need to know; they need to have all eyes forward. If the deadwalkers are getting bold enough to come this close…

 _I need to move_ , he tells himself, trying to stay calm and ignore the ringing in his ears and the pain in his head and the fact that he doesn’t have a fucking clue where his gun’s disappeared to. _I need to get out. I need to warn the others_.

Other sounds are starting to filter into his hearing, enough for Arthur to realize that he’s definitely not alone in here. He knows his team managed to take out a good chunk of the deadwalkers who’d jumped them, knows he got in a few headshots of his own, but there’s enough shuffling and grunting going on in his peripheral hearing for him to know enough had avoided getting their heads blown off to pose a problem. Why he’s still breathing, then, is a question that deserves examination at some later point when he’s not lying prone in a roomful of corpses.

He maneuvers himself so that he’s propped up on his elbows, which is progress, he supposes, even if his throbbing skull is punishing him for it. And oh, his vision’s gone a bit fuzzy around the edges; that’s nice. _Probably concussed, then_ , he decides. Stubbornly, he hauls himself upright into a sitting position and immediately feels like he’s going to be sick. _Definitely concussed, then_. Fantastic.

A new sound weaves through the high-pitched ringing that’s still filling his ears. It’s a tearing sound, a slick sort of crunch, followed by a stream of slurps and low moans. It takes too long for Arthur’s sluggish, bruise-addled mind to catch up to what he’s hearing, but when it does he connects the dots and realizes why he hasn’t been made into a snack yet. The deadwalkers are…distracted.

 _They’re feeding_ , he thinks, stunned into a strange state of near-detachment because this isn’t happening to him. He is not listening to this, he is not hearing this, he isn’t—

Another horrible, violent slurping noise. Bile rises in Arthur’s throat, hot and acidic, and there’s nothing else for it at this point but to bend sideways and try to throw up as quietly as he possibly can.

His mouth and nose are on fire and his eyes are burning too but he’s barely paying attention. He’s too busy wondering who it is, who’s being made into a meal right now when they were breathing and talking and laughing and fighting an hour ago, wondering who’s died that he was supposed to protect. Fuck, there isn’t—there won’t even be a body to bring home, at least not one that’s in any shape to be properly buried.

 _Gwen?_ he wonders dimly, staring at the mess he’s made and Leon’s body and everything is so fucked he doesn’t know which way is up anymore. _Percy?_

_Morgana?_

No. He shakes his head and cringes at the resulting stab of pain. He and Morgana have been trained for this from the time they were children, since she came to live with them after Gorlois died, since Uther shut down and decided the only way to protect his children was to turn them into soldiers. And it’s worked. All these years with the world sinking deeper and deeper into the muck and it’s worked so far, both of them surviving even if they are what some would consider a therapist’s dream job. Morgana’s one of the best, even able to beat him in their drills some days. No deadwalker has got the better of her. It’s impossible.

_Then why is it so quiet?_

Arthur shakes the thought off as he would an irksome fly. He doesn’t have time for this. He needs to (check for survivors, bring home the bodies, kill the rest of them, get a weapon, get out, do _something_ )—

The hand closes over his mouth before he’s even registered it within his field of vision, and that paired with the fact that someone has managed to sneak up on him in the first place is, Arthur figures, a testament to how fucked in the head he is right now. Not that it’ll matter in a minute or so anyway, because Arthur’s gagging on the too-close press of cold rotting flesh so he knows he’s dead even before he turns and finds himself face to face with a deadwalker.

His brain grinds to a screeching halt, his body freezes, his mental process reduced to nothing more than _I’m going to die I’m going to die_ on a loop because two unnaturally blue eyes are fixed on his face and at this proximity and he’s lost his machete somewhere and without any ammo—

Training kicks back in, the pause button coming off, and Arthur feels for his gun anyway, thinks maybe he can bash the thing’s head in if nothing else, but the concussion or whatever it is has made him slow and sluggish and apparently predictable. The deadwalker takes its hand off of his mouth and knocks the gun out of his reach before Arthur so much as twitches in its direction, eyes never leaving his.

 _This is it, then_ , Arthur realizes with a cold finality, his death literally staring him in the face. Death in a filthy red hoodie. He stares back defiantly as it edges closer, determined not to die with his eyes closed like a coward. It’s some small consolation.

 _Go on_ , he thinks when the deadwalker is so close that the smell of rotten flesh is almost overpowering. _Make it quick, and I hope you choke on me._

The deadwalker does something odd then. It reaches up, cupping Arthur’s face with blood-soaked hands ( _whose blood?_ Arthur can’t help wondering). He can feel the sticky smear left behind, marking his face, but he doesn’t flinch. If there’s one thing he’s accustomed to by now, it’s blood.

And then the strangest part: The deadwalker gives a short, jerky movement, almost like a nod, and backs away. At least enough for Arthur to inhale without wanting to gag quite so much.

He’s struggling to work around the fog enveloping his brain and get out something to the effect of _what the hell was that all about_ , but the deadwalker has one last bizarre trick up its sleeve, apparently, because it spits out a word—an actual English word, slurred but still something that Arthur actually recognizes:

“Sssafe.”

To which Arthur replies with an intelligent and extremely articulate,

“The _fuck_.”

The deadwalker blinks at him very slowly. On a human the movement would probably be used by someone speaking to a very small and possibly very dense child, but Arthur dismisses the thought as ridiculous.

“Ssafe,” the deadwalker repeats, sounding more confident this time. It gestures to the blood drying on Arthur’s face and adds, with visible effort, “Wonnn’t…sssmell.”

Arthur has clearly hit his head harder than he’d previously thought. He’s wandered into an elaborate hallucination wherein deadwalkers finger paint with blood all over his face and then _talk to him in understandable English_ while informing him that the finger paint somehow makes him safe in a room filled with flesh eaters. This is not happening. He’s either going to wake up back at the compound with his team around him or he’s never going to wake up at all.

The deadwalker, oblivious to the mental health crisis Arthur is currently experiencing, opens its mouth and grinds out another word.

“Commme,” it says, and some hysterical part of Arthur’s brain fills in the rest of the _Terminator_ reference unbidden. “Wonnn’t…eeeat.”

 _You won’t? Or your friends won’t?_ Arthur can’t quite force his mouth to make the words. Everything seems to be wavering a little, swimming before his eyes, and it’s making concentration difficult. He continues to eye the deadwalker with deep skepticism. It blinks at him some more.

“Wonnn’t…eeeat,” it repeats at last, and that’s apparently all the clarification Arthur is going to get. But evidently he’s taking too long because the deadwalker finally reaches over, grips Arthur’s arm and hauls him to his feet with surprising strength for a rail-thin corpse.

“Mmmove,” it mumbles, but Arthur is officially concussed because the abrupt change of position causes him to stumble into a desk as he tries to take a step. It makes a screeching sound in the quiet of the room, and one of the other remaining deadwalkers clambers to its feet. And that draws Arthur’s eye, of fucking course it does, so of fucking course he sees that he’s distracted the thing from sinking its teeth into—

Arthur closes his eyes, squeezes them shut until stars start to dance behind his eyelids, hoping he can forget what he’s just seen and never think of it again.

He knows, logically, that isn’t really an option. Just like he now knows that Percy, at least, has joined Leon in the ranks of the dead. All he can do for them now is hope they don’t come back.

 _Keep it together_ , he tells himself fiercely. _Keep it together, you can’t afford to fall apart right now._

A cold grip closes around his arm again and Arthur tries to jerk away instinctively, but the fingers only dig harder into his flesh. He turns to see the first deadwalker again, watching him still with those bright eyes.

The other deadwalker, the one with blood covering the lower half of his face and crusting in a mop of lanky brown hair, moves stiffly in their direction. “Shhh,” murmurs the first, not that Arthur needs to be told twice, even with his ears ringing and every fiber of his being screaming at him to claw the thing’s face off with his nails if necessary. He needs to be smart about this. The safety of the city comes first, and if he doesn’t make it back to warn them what’s going on out here, they’re going to be as good as blind. He needs to stay focused. So he swallows his tongue and tries to look casually dead. However the fuck one manages _that_ particular feat.

The mop-haired deadwalker grunts at the blue-eyed one, gets a shake of the head in return. They seem to have, as far as Arthur can tell, some sort of convoluted conversation with twitches and wordless sounds, and he can’t help but wonder why they’re not just talking if they’re suddenly capable of speech. At least that way he’d have some warning as to whether they’re deciding to eat him after all.

At length, though, the mop-haired deadwalker jerks around and starts heading for the door. The others follow and Arthur’s deadwalker shuffles after, long pale fingers still digging into his sleeve and tugging him along. Arthur follows for lack of any better ideas. He’s surrounded on all sides now by the dead-eyed horde, he apparently isn’t capable of walking in a straight line let alone running, and the corpse clinging to his arm is stronger than it looks. Bolting isn’t looking like a viable option, at least not right now.

And he knows it’s masochistic and stupid, he knows even as he does it, but he can’t help taking one last look around through the press of shuffling bodies, looking for more familiar corpses. If any of his team is missing it’s possible that they managed to get out, isn’t it? Percy and Leon are dead, and he’ll mourn for them later, but Gwen and Morgana might have—

It’s the hair that does it in the end, spread out in a liquid-looking black mass against the white floor tiles. Surrounded by drying blood.

_No, no, no—_

He knows before her face comes into view, green eyes staring sightlessly up at the ceiling. He knows before he sees, because even something like hair can be telltale when you’ve grown up with a person. When that person is your sister.

And just like that, the world cracks open a little more.

_Morgana._


	5. Chapter 5

.

**_Chapter Five_ **

**_ _ **

.

Em has no fucking clue what he’s doing.

Not that that’s an entirely new feeling, okay, because it isn’t. He’s completely used to winging things, wandering around and drifting off and optimistically choosing to believe that it’ll all work out somehow. And of course, if it doesn’t…well, he’s already dead, isn’t he? Not much more that can be done to him at this, point, so maybe the optimism is motivated a little bit by apathy these days. Whatever.

Point being: Never before has his particular brand of going with the flow involved someone else’s neck on the line. As in, someone who’ll probably actually give a shit if said neck has its tendons ripped out by someone’s teeth, you see his point? And given said living guy is a professional distributer of headshots, Em’s quickly becoming concerned that going with the flow this time might mean pitching headfirst over a waterfall.

Which, again—the hell does he care? He’s _dead_. Unless the apathy tips the other way one of these days and makes a boney out of him, Em’s basically set.

Stands to reason, then, that his concern is chiefly for the man with the beating heart staggering along at his side, jaw tight, eyes fixed straight ahead. There’s no fear in them anymore, no fight, just a blankness Em really doesn’t like even if he can guess the reason. It’s probably for the best, he tells himself. He spread the blood from the wound Morgana’d given him all over Arthur’s face—the blood of another zombie usually does the trick to mask the smell of the living—but he supposes it can't hurt if Arthur looks as dull and flat-eyed as the rest of them. Better safe than sorry.

 _Safe_ , Morgana snorts in the back of his mind, where he’s been trying to shove her with little and less success. _You’re dragging my still living, trigger-happy, **grieving** brother around in a packful of zombies. Explain to me what part of that reads ‘safe’ to you._

 _What was I supposed to do?_ Em shoots back silently, glaring before remembering she probably can’t see it. _Leave him behind to get eaten?_

_That **is** what your kind typically do, yes._

She sort of has him there. And given how she was killed in the first place, Em doesn’t think he can make the argument that he’s actually a fairly nice guy who suffers from occasional bouts of altruism.

Not that it matters, but he doesn’t think Arthur would buy that excuse either. He’s going to have to think of something else in case he’s asked by someone he can’t ignore.

Then again, Arthur might not ask at all. He doesn’t look like he’s in much shape to be asking any questions right now, hasn’t since he saw Morgana with her skull broken open. He’d let out one small, broken sound that might’ve been a word but Em couldn’t catch it, and then his face had just…shut down. It’s an unnerving quality in someone who’s supposed to be alive. Em’s currently choosing to focus on that instead of the fact that he’s to blame for putting it there.

_Kill a girl and save her brother. Where the hell’s the sense in that?_

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t have any answers. It all swings back to the issue of Em not having a fucking clue what he’s doing. It’s not like he just sat up this morning and decided _hey, you know what, I’m going to completely go against every unwritten rule of my kind and rescue someone who’ll take my head off without blinking if I give him half a chance_. This was _not_ on his itinerary. He hadn’t thought ahead, hadn’t even thought about it while he was doing it, he’d just done it. Like there was no other choice he possibly could’ve made. And that makes absolutely no sense at all.

The trudge back to the airport seems even more interminably slow than the walk to the city did, especially as Em’s preoccupied with trying not to look over at his new charge every two seconds to make sure he hasn’t got himself chomped. So far, so good on that count, although he’s nervous about what might happen when Arthur snaps out of his shock. He’d like to think he’s putting his own neck on the line for a guy smart enough to realize when to keep his mouth shut and his head down, but there’s always the possibility Arthur will want to go on some Roaring Rampage of Revenge and render all of Em’s nobler intentions a moot point. Actually, he seems more like that kind of guy.

 _He is absolutely ‘that kind of guy’_ , Morgana says with what feels like a nod. _He’s not usually an idiot, but threaten someone close to him and he turns into the lunkhead most people think our soldiers are._

 _Why are you being so helpful?_ Em demands. _On that note, what are you even doing in my head to begin with?_

_One: I don’t actually want my brother to be eaten. If keeping him alive means spoon-feeding you tidbits, well, I suppose that’s all I can do at this point. Two: You can’t be seriously asking me this question. We don’t exactly run studies on what happens to deadwalker brains after they feast on our corpses._

_Well, as a card-carrying corpse-eater I can tell you that this? Normally doesn’t happen. Ever._

_Then you’ve obviously never eaten someone as stubborn as I am_ , she replies with unnerving lightness, considering the subject. _All I can tell you for certain is that if you see my brother killed, I will find a way to tear you apart from the inside out. Have I made myself clear?_

The conversation trails off after that, neither of them really having anything to say to one another. Em’s not unhappy with the quiet, bizarre as it is knowing someone can interrupt his personal mental monologue at any given time, and nice as it can be to actually have an almost-conversation with someone. Morgana sort of scares him, which is ridiculous considering they’re both dead and she doesn’t even have the benefit of rot-stiff fingers to threaten with, but he has the feeling that if anyone could figure out how to kill him _again_ without even being in possession of a body, it’s his current mental roommate.

It’s gone from dusk to dawn again by the time they stagger back into the airport, where the little group of remaining zombies breaks up.

 _Thanks guys_ , Em thinks at them as they shuffle their separate ways. _Real fun. We should do it again sometime._

It’s the little things, really. He never realized how much people talked until he couldn’t anymore.

Will is the last to linger, giving Em a long look. It’s making Em want to squirm a bit, especially with the warmth of a living body burning a metaphorical hole in his side. Will likes his baggage carousel and sweeping the same pile of dust over and over again, but he’s never struck Em as stupid, at least not for a zombie.

Eventually, though, he gives a little jerk of the head and starts heading in the direction of the aforementioned baggage carousel. Em would let out a sigh of relief if his lungs still worked. Instead he reaches over to grab Arthur’s arm and pull him in the direction of the escalator.

Arthur, apparently waking up from his trance, wrenches his arm out of Em’s grip. Em gives him a look that he really hopes conveys ‘ _what the fuckery fuck_ ’ effectively.

All he gets in return is an ice-cold, “Don’t touch me.”

Em blinks slowly to buy himself time to calm down, then decides to forgive Arthur for being an arse. He’s had a trying day, after all. So he puts both arms up in an awkward approximation of surrender and looks pointedly in the direction of the escalator, hoping Arthur can take a hint. Also hoping he won’t do anything stupid and run.

He doesn’t.

 _Well_ , Em thinks with some surprise. _Congratulations, Em. You’ve got yourself a semi-tame human._

_Now what the hell are you going to do with him?_


	6. Chapter 6

.

**_Chapter Six_ **

**_ _ **

.

Somehow when Arthur had imagined a mass zombie lair, he hadn’t pictured Heathrow.

As a child he’d loved to fly. Uther was always jetting off to some conference or another, but it was a rare treat when Arthur and eventually Morgana got to tag along. They would battle over the window seat, Arthur losing more often than not, but every now and again he’d get lucky and earn the right to the coveted spot. He’d usually end up spending the entire flight with his nose pressed against the window, watching the clouds change shape and the sky shift from color to color. Five-hour flights would go past in the blink of an eye. As a little boy he’d thought of them like nothing so much as magical, like flying in the belly of a great, mechanized dragon.

He supposes that’s one more childhood memory to be sacrificed on the altar of zombies, because quite frankly this is just depressing.

Some other time, maybe, it’d be more of a punch to the gut—the shell of a massive building that had once been bustling with noise, with people, with life. It’s more of a mockery now than anything, filled with walking corpses and an immeasurably eerie silence. As it stands, the destruction of a little more nostalgia pales in comparison to what has been lost. He barely even notices the change.

His deadwalker leads him up a broken escalator, causing Arthur to stand behind impatiently while it painstakingly maneuvers up one stair, then another, with none of the predatory speed its kind gains while they hunt. And then there’s a long pause halfway up while it pauses to exchange nods and grunts with—

Even after everything Arthur’s seen, his stomach still gives a lurch when he realizes the small, hunched figure on the other escalator is a child, a little boy who can’t be more than eight or nine years old. He’s not naïve, their new world leaves no room for it, but it’s one thing to know logically that some kid somewhere must have—and another thing entirely to see it in person.

He feels sick.

The feeling twists itself into a knot when the boy turns its head to look Arthur in the face.

Even without the odd, unnatural brightness that death lends them those eyes would be piercing, Arthur thinks. The boy stares at him without blinking, and it’s only when Arthur feels his own eyes beginning to water that it looks away. It turns back to Arthur’s deadwalker and gives an uninterested half-shrug before settling its chin back on its knees to watch the panorama below.

Arthur’s—oh, for god’s sake, he’s calling it Hoodie from now on because calling it ‘his’ deadwalker just sounds ridiculous—Hoodie apparently takes that as a dismissal and resumes its painfully slow ascent. Which means Arthur is trapped standing next to the deadwalker kid for far longer than he’s comfortable with, even if said kid pays him about as much attention as a dust bunny.

Eventually they make it up the damned Mount Everest of an escalator and out the back of the airport…onto the tarmac. Arthur shoots a skeptical look at Hoodie’s back. Escaping death by zombie only to die of exposure would be incredibly embarrassing. All he can do is hope the deadwalker didn’t save him just to forget about stupid little human things like acceptable body temperature levels.

It occurs to him, halfway across the asphalt, that this would be the perfect time to make a break for it. There are no other deadwalkers in sight, and he has faith in his ability to outrun at least one of them, thank you. He doesn’t know when he’ll get another chance, and for a second his muscles tense as he prepares himself to bolt—somewhere, find some cover, hide until he can try and make his way back to the old city and then back to the compound from there. He could do it.

He could do it.

He doesn't.

His stomach growls loudly at the moment of indecision, choosing the least opportune of moments to remind him that he hasn’t eaten in the better part of two days. Hoodie hears it, twisting around to look at Arthur over its shoulder. There’s something… _amused_ in its expression, something almost recognizably human if Arthur were to tilt his head and squint. It’s off-putting, and something in it stills him.

He doesn’t run. He doesn’t know why, but he doesn’t.

Hoodie drags itself up the stairs of a jet plane, disappears into the interior, and Arthur—god help him—follows.

.

For the second time in as many hours, Arthur muses over the demise of any preconceived notions he might’ve had concerning zombie lairs. Because this one is definitely not what he was expecting. Cramped, yes. Claustrophobic, certainly.

But it’s filled with _dragons_.

Everywhere Arthur looks there are dust catchers, but it’d taken him a minute to realize they all followed a common theme. Dragon figurines, dusty old paperback fantasy novels, salt and pepper shakers, even a dragon mobile of some sort that Arthur nearly walks into, stumbling across the middle row of seats. Clearly Hoodie has an obsession.

“Like what you’ve done with the place,” Arthur comments dryly, but it isn’t even a complete lie. There’s light, at least, the blinders all shoved up to allow what little sun there is to shine through. It could be a lot worse, he supposes. Visions of severed limbs, blood spatters and piles of skulls and bones had danced through his head there for a moment or two, something he’s sure Morgana will laugh at him for later.

 _Would_ , he corrects himself sharply. _Would, if her head hadn’t been smashed open in a fucking pharmacy by one of this deadwalker’s friends._

Whether or not this one has saved his life, whether or not it’s just biding its time until it can try to eat him without having to share, Arthur knows he can’t afford to forget what he’s dealing with. They’re monsters, all of them. Their humanity has long since withered away to dust.

Hoodie nudges past him to yank the plane’s door shut, and just like that Arthur is trapped again.

He stands stiffly by as Hoodie shuffles past, plopping down into a seat as far across the aisle from Arthur as possible…which also puts it squarely between Arthur and the door. Naturally. It fiddles with a little lever on the side, adjusting the seat until it’s satisfactory.

And then it twists around so it can stare. At Arthur.

This gets uncomfortable after about ten seconds, mostly because Arthur’s training won’t let him turn his back to a deadwalker. It’s been drilled into his head too many times: turn your back on the enemy and you’re begging to get a knife jammed into it. It doesn’t matter that this particular deadwalker seems content, for the moment, to simply watch him as if he’s a fascinating television program; he still can’t bring himself to do it. So the staring contest continues.

Of all the adjectives Arthur would have used to describe a hypothetical zombie kidnapping, ‘boring’ would not have been one of them. He’s beginning to reevaluate that too.

“So this is what,” he finally says when he can’t take the silence anymore. “Your lair?”

Hoodie does that thing again, the thing where it blinks like it’s trying to communicate _you are an utter imbecile_ via Morse code. Which Arthur knows is asinine, but he can’t stop himself thinking it.

He wasn’t really expecting an answer either, so it comes as a bit of a surprise when Hoodie frowns like it’s concentrating hard and slowly articulates, “Hooome.”

Arthur raises his eyebrows. “Home. Really.”

Hoodie tips its head to the side in what feels like an unnecessarily judgmental gesture. Arthur remembers that the place _he_ calls home is a military compound walled in by scrap metal and crawling with soldiers and is forced to concede the unmade point.

“Well, does ‘home’ have a fridge somewhere?” Arthur asks waspishly. He’s not sure if brain matter needs to be refrigerated, actually, and that is _not_ a road he’s going down right now. _Focus on basic human needs_ , he tells himself. _Focus on one minute at a time._ “Because if you’re not planning on trying to eat me, I’m going to need food at some point. And whatever…leftovers you have lying around isn’t going to cut it.” Another thing he’s not going to think about. _Keep it clinical. One minute at a time._

Hoodie frowns a bit, like it’s trying to parse something out, but Arthur’s focused less on that than on the fact that his eyelids are starting to feel like lead curtains. Vaguely he remembers reading something in some textbook about concussions and victims needing loads of sleep. He’s pretty sure they also aren’t meant to do anything too strenuous. Like, say, walk from London to Heathrow without stopping. Fuck.

“Humans,” he snaps, “need food. Actual food. So either kill me now or do something about that, because starving to death doesn’t top my list of ways to go.”

He actually gets an eyebrow raise at that one, even if it takes a very long time, and at some other point Arthur will wonder what the hell he’s dealing with because it’s feeling less and less like a typical zombie. For now he’d just like to get said zombie the hell away before he passes out and is left defenseless to a corpse’s mercy.

Swallowing his pride, knowing it’s probably the least painful thing he’s going to have to do if he wants to survive this bizarre situation, Arthur bites out “Please.”

Hoodie only hesitates another second before shoving up out of the seat and shuffling across the width of the jet, and Arthur cannot believe it’s actually listening. The deadwalker is actually going to find him food…or it’s going to find its friends and tell them it’s got a snack back at its place, at which point Arthur is going to be unconscious as well as truly fucked.

The deadwalker hesitates at the door just long enough for Arthur’s heart to drop sickeningly.

It makes a few short, aborted noises before shaking its head in apparent frustration and turning back around. It heads straight for Arthur, who’s trying to locate a dragon-shaped object he might use as a weapon when Hoodie stops short. It reaches for the compartment over Arthur’s head, pops it open, and pulls something out.

A scratchy blanket, standard airline issue, is dumped unceremoniously onto his lap.

Arthur looks up into unnaturally bright blue eyes.

Hoodie gives an awkward, stiff little shrug before turning around and resuming his—its journey out of the plane.

It pauses briefly at the door to run its fingers over a small figure—Arthur can’t make out the shape in his peripheral vision, but given the rest of the décor he thinks he can make an educated guess—and when the door has closed behind it Arthur is still staring down at the blankets.

The blackness takes him like an anvil to the head not long after, but he’s warm underneath those inexplicable blankets. Warm and wondering.


	7. Chapter 7

.

**_Chapter Seven_ **

**_ _ **

.

Somehow Em’s found himself on a quest for food. Human food.

As in, food for a human. Not food made _from_ humans. Which is not a distinction he’s had to bother himself with in some time.

At least he doesn’t need to worry about Arthur running off, not for the moment anyway. Em remembers some of the basics of being human, if less and less as time goes on, and he knows there are times when no matter how tired your body is, your mind refuses to let it go to sleep because it might actually die. He’s guessing being in a confined space with someone who sees your species as an appetizer is one of those times, but Arthur had still looked like he was keeping his eyes open through sheer force of will. That plus the blood Em had seen at the pharmacy adds up to injury of some kind, maybe something he’d recognize if he’d been a medical student in life. Maybe he was. He guesses he wouldn’t know either way.

 _Maybe I had a genius-level IQ_ , he thinks as he reaches the end of the tarmac. _Maybe I was on my way to inventing something life-changing when I…changed._

He does this sometimes, plays pretend with memories he doesn’t have. Hey, there’s a lot of time to kill when walking five feet takes about five years. Zombies are like sloths that way.

 _I like sloths_ , he thinks wistfully. _I hope sloths still exist somewhere. Hey, maybe I was a zoologist. Could happen._

That thought keeps him going right through the airport doors, after which he wanders around for a good…he doesn’t even know how long. Has he mentioned it’s been a really long time since he’s had to bother with human food? And a lot of that was going the long way around to avoid the escalator, which is a bitch to navigate no matter how many times he does it. Eventually he stumbles across a snack bar with a few cans of…something, the label’s worn off, but they weren’t in a fridge to begin with so he’s guessing they haven’t gone bad? Well, it’s probably the best he can expect to find on short notice.

He spends an inordinately long time staring blankly at two smudged cans, trying to figure out their contents before he gives up and tucks them both into his pockets.

Shuffling back to the exit, Em becomes uncomfortably aware that this is beginning to resemble some bizarre mating ritual. Zombie kidnaps boy, brings boy edible food in place of flowers…yeah, this looks pretty bad. And okay, so Arthur isn’t exactly hard on the eyes. Tall, blond, fit (he’s guessing constantly running for your life has to have some perks in the personal fitness department)—hey, he’s dead, he’s not _blind_. Not that it matters for about 500 different reasons, reasons one through 350 being that _it’s insane_. It would be insane even if he were alive. This is not a romcom, and the best ‘vague attraction at first sight’ has got him so far is almost killed.

Security Guard Guy, the recent arrival, is making his rounds near the walkway. He doesn’t glance Em’s way as he passes, eyes fixed straight ahead.

 _Definitely took his job too seriously, that one, whoever he was._ And it wasn’t a security guard, either; the man died in civilian clothing. But the real security guards are too dead to complain that some random newbie showed up one day and started checking perimeters, so “Security Guard Guy” it is until Em can work out something better.

He lifts one arm in an awkward approximation of a wave as he shuffles by. Security Guard Guy doesn’t seem to notice. Business as usual, then.

Em makes his way back across the tarmac as the sun starts going down. Really, his steps-per-minute average must be fucking awful if it took him that long to find two canned preservatives. Shit. He wonders if Arthur’s awake by now.

 _If he is, he’s most likely planning some meticulously bone-headed scheme to escape_ , Morgana remarks.

He sighs and gives in. _I’ll try to keep that in mind._

_Do what you like. I won’t exactly be mourning you if Arthur does find something to take your head off with._

_Duly noted._ He figures that’s fair enough, seeing as she’s only a ghost in his head because he killed her in the first place. He does like to shoot himself in the foot like that. As much as Em likes to believe that he died doing something heroic like saving a kitten from a house fire or taking a bullet for a small child, he knows himself well enough to guess it was probably doing something spectacularly stupid instead.

That’s what’s going through Em’s mind when he hears the roar.

Nothing quite like the roar of a boney to send shivers down even a dead man’s spine.

He’s not sure how he knows, exactly, and maybe he’ll never figure it out, but something nudges him to turn right back around and stagger into the bowels of the airport where even his fellow undead don’t tend to go for nice relaxing walks. It’s where the boneys gather, and at the moment they sound pretty pissed off, so everyone else seems to be giving it a wider berth than usual.

That’s where he sees Arthur, brandishing a machete like an absolute brain-dead _moron_ while surrounded on all sides by boneys.

There are three of them. Still plenty to tie Em’s stomach in a knot, and he’s saying this as someone who eats human flesh on a regular basis.

Arthur manages to decapitate one of them even as Em tries to get to the melee— _to do what, exactly?_ the non-suicidal part of his brain is demanding, but he’s gotten pretty good at shutting it up—and sends a nearly fleshless skull rolling across the linoleum and a skeletal body thudding to the floor, where it continues to twitch, bone-thin fingers grasping and clawing. When another grabs for his machete-wielding wrist he spins into it, pulls a knife from bloody nowhere and opens the boney up from waist to sternum.

 _Which would be a lot more bloody impressive if we had any organs to spill, idiot._ Its thin stretch of flesh being slit open gets the thing to back off at least, giving Arthur enough time to put a bit of distance between them, and Em’s running now, as well as he’s able, and _oh look, a convenient fire extinguisher. That could be useful for possibly not dying._

He hauls the fire extinguisher off the hook, near enough now to get spattered with a bit of boney goo when Arthur takes off another head. Apparently not noticing the third one bearing down on him from behind, jaws stretched wide—

Em swings the fire extinguisher with all of his strength, hard enough that he thinks he probably dislocated something.

It connects squarely with the last boney’s head, which explodes and makes a terrific mess all over the place, but at least nobody in the immediate vicinity is going to be eaten today and Em figures that’s something.

Arthur whirls around at the noise, already swinging the machete again like the paranoid freak that he is, so Em brings the fire extinguisher up again on instinct. He’s not positive he knows what his face looks like, but he rather likes having one.

The blade slams into the metal with a clang that sends shocks up Em’s arms. Arthur drops the machete with a badly muffled curse and Em starts gearing himself up for a royal lecture on _ungrateful prats_ who try to take the heads off their rescuers.

“ _You_?” Arthur says, looking somewhat less grateful than Em had hoped (but probably about what he had expected). “What are you _doing_ here?”

Em drops the fire extinguisher, not caring overmuch about the noise, and throws his arms up in exasperation. Honestly, why does he bother?

His righteous indignation, however, is cut off by the sound of another roar—not close, but not nearly far enough off, echoing off the tiles and making Em want to shit himself if he’s being totally honest, which (again) is something he tries to avoid.

“Mooove,” he grunts, already making for the exit, adrenaline or the mental placebo equivalent making the formation of words easier than it normally would be. When he sees Arthur just standing there looking like a dip he digs his fingers into his sleeve and growls, “ _Now_.”

Arthur moves.

.

They make it back to the jet in what Em’s convinced is record time, at least for him, still clutching at Arthur’s arm and half-dragging him along because he may be the corpse in this equation, but their difference in athletic ability won’t mean jack shit if the boneys realize who annihilated their kin and come following.

Fuck. _Fuck_. He’s just killed a _boney_.

_What the hell has happened to my life?_

_…So to speak._

When they reach the stairs up into the plane Em shoves Arthur forward first, keeps his eye on the tarmac—at least with all this open space he’ll be able to see something coming from a ways away—but there’s nothing as far as he can see. And if the others didn’t see what happened they won’t have any reason to bury him six feet under, undead or not.

Unless—oh, _shit_.

 _The heartbeat_ , Em thinks faintly as Arthur climbs into the jet behind him. _Shit, they’ll hear it and then they’ll_ —he’s not sure how long the dead man’s blood trick will last. He starts after Arthur, hauls himself up two steps at a time, thinks maybe he should tear one of his wounds open again and put a new coat of paint on his houseguest. Better safe than sorry.

And it’s that thought that Em is distracted by as he fumbles with the jet’s side door and finally gets it open and then shut behind him; he opens his mouth to try communicating his plan only to find himself with a knife to his throat.

“Don’t move,” Arthur warns behind him.

Em would laugh if the whole situation weren’t so damn obnoxious. _I’m already dead, you complete clotpole, nicking an artery isn’t going to do you any good._ Unless Arthur’s planning to saw his head off with the little blade, that is, but surely he can’t think Em would take that lying down. This is just stupid all around.

Arthur nudges him toward a seat—none too gently, Em notes with irritation— and maneuvers him into a sitting position. Which is another thing Em’s quite capable of handling on his own, thank you, but he’s trying to be magnanimous about this whole thing. At least he’s still human enough to realize that his current shit of a guest has had a _very_ trying day.

 _Well?_ he asks silently, watching Arthur glare at him with that laughably small blade still pressed to his neck. _What are you going to do now, soldier boy?_

“Hands out of your pockets,” Arthur orders in a tone of steely calm. Em looks down for said hands like he’s momentarily forgotten where he put them. And, well, he supposes he had. Never mind that he could kill Arthur about four different ways even without the use of his hands, but he doesn’t think educating Arthur on that point would be in his best interests right now.

Slowly (not that he’s capable of moving any other way), Em pulls his hands free along with the cans he’d grabbed. That, he’s satisfied to see, pokes a hole in Arthur’s composure.

“What the hell are you doing with those?” he demands.

Em gives him a long look. It’s one part Will, two parts him, and entirely meant to convey that the person on the receiving end is a spectacular sort of idiot.

Then, because sometimes it’s better to make oneself clear where communication is concerned, Em manages to slur out:

“You…asssked.”

Arthur looks startled at that. Em cringes inwardly. _Bloody S’s, every time._ Ah well. Two syllables is nothing to sneeze at. It gives him a bit of extra confidence, so just for good measure he adds, “Aaarse.”

 _That could’ve come out better._ Still, judging by the look on Arthur’s face—like he hasn’t worked out yet whether he should be more shocked or offended—Em got his point across pretty well. He gives himself a little mental pat on the back for all of two seconds before the point of the knife, which had been slackening for a minute there, begins digging into his Adam’s apple.

“What the hell are you playing at?” Arthur asks, and there’s the cold questioning again. _Too bad_ , Em thinks. _When he’s not acting like a robot he’s almost tolerable._

He’s not really sure what he’s being asked anyway, so he offers a noncommittal shrug. The knifepoint prods deeper. Em can feel his own blood trickling slowly into his hoodie. Ah well. Not as if it’s not stained all to hell as is.

“You actually went out and found canned food.” It’s not a question. “Why? What are you trying to do?”

And that’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? Em thinks about trying to say _when I figure it out you’ll be the first to know_ , or maybe _I’m thinking of starting a living harem, wouldn’t mind being the guinea pig for that would you?_

But he doesn’t actually fancy having his neck sliced open and anyway, there’re too many syllables by far in any of those options. So he shrugs again and offers the closest thing to an answer he has.

“Keeep…you…sssafe.”

Arthur’s hard expression goes slack with disbelief and Em feels abruptly mortified. _Well, that came out embarrassingly earnest. All right, play it cool. He might not even notice you’re about to die. Again. From mortification. You can do this._

For a minute it looks like Arthur is going to ask another stupid, vague question that apparently makes Em want to respond in an equally stupid, vague way. Thankfully for whatever remains of his sanity his houseguest appears to pull himself together. Although Em can’t help but notice the knifepoint has eased somewhat on his throat.

“You’re not even lying, are you.”

Another question that isn’t actually a question. Em has a feeling that if he could actually talk without having to psyche himself up for more than a syllable, that tendency would get annoying very fast. As it stands…well, it still has the potential to become very annoying, but at least it gives him fewer opportunities to make an idiot of himself.

Still. As a sharp implement remains poised to sever his jugular and the quiet stretches on, Em decides that more clarification is evidently needed.

“Not…lll…” Fucking hell, they could be here forever at this rate. “… _lying_.” There. _Shit._ And again, because he can see the doubt in Arthur’s eyes and he can only hope repetition will push it to the breaking point, “Keep…you… _safe_.”

It’s the most he can remember saying in one go without slurring.

The knife drops away from his throat.

.

“Tomatoes.” Arthur’s voice is flat. “You brought back canned tomatoes.”

Em attempts to get something out that will convey his outrage at Arthur actually having to _gall_ to complain about the edible human food that Em went out and hunted down despite only having eaten brains himself for—well. All right, fine, maybe he doesn’t have much in the way of a moral high ground here. But still.

Anyway, all he manages is an irritated grunt. _Damn._

Arthur doesn’t seem to be paying attention. “Not exactly what I would call a meal,” he says, almost to himself, “but I suppose it’s better than nothing.”

His stomach growls as if on cue. Em gives it a pointed look. _Beggars can’t be choosers, you absolute prat._

Glaring at the can like it’s done him some personal wrong, Arthur manages to get the lid open with a complicated flick of the wrist and the blade of his knife. He prods at the bulbous, floating red masses with suspicion while Em watches interestedly. _Human food. Doesn’t really look like much, does it? Did I really used to like that stuff?_

His houseguest seems all right with it, considering he tucks in with his bare hands. Then again, Em realizes, he probably hasn’t eaten in a while. Between the walk back to Heathrow, and then however long it took Em to find those two damn cans… _All right, so maybe I’ve failed at making a good first impression._ And that’s even before taking into account the fact that their first meeting involved Arthur shooting him and then Em seriously debating eating his brain while he was unconscious.

They’ve come to an odd little truce though, sitting with a carefully calculated three seats between them. Almost the entire aisle, and Em is still between Arthur and the door. Not out of any creepy hostage reason, you understand, just. A sort of creepy hostage reason. For god’s sake, he just doesn’t want the idiot to make a break for it and end up being eaten for his troubles. Death apparently embeds routine into whatever’s left of their nervous systems, but Em doesn’t pretend to know everything that goes on in his fellow dead people’s heads. Even if it’s not much, all it would take is one drifter deciding to take a moonlit stroll on the tarmac and Arthur would be history.

Besides, there’s another reason Em likes it out here, away from the rest of the crowd.

The boneys don’t come out this far, not often. They prefer to stay in the bowels of the airport, lurking in the shadows and surfacing only to hunt. Even worse are the in-betweeners, the ones who haven’t gone full-on Skeletor but are getting there, ripping their own faces off like that’ll scratch the incessant itch. You can get that way from hunger, Em knows from experience, but some of them have just given up. Undead suicide. It’s about the most depressing thing imaginable.

Anyway. They don’t come out here either. Don’t like to move very much. And the boneys, for all their speed, aren’t much for exploring. That’s a big part of why Em quietly staked his claim to this abandoned flying machine so close to his deathday he can’t even remember it properly, too close to that ever-blurry line between his life and his afterlife—it’s the only damn place he can be alone. Not left alone, but actually alone. Which would be a lot less fantastic if he could actually have conversations with the hundreds of people he shares real estate with, but as it stands…

Maybe he can chalk all of this up to loneliness, Em thinks, watching a living person eat proper food not five feet away from where he’s sitting. Maybe he can say this is all because he wanted to hear a real voice speaking to him again and forget the rest of it, forget all about those eyes stopping him in his tracks when stopping, for a zombie, means dying for more reasons than one.

Having polished off the tomatoes and apparently tired of the silent scrutiny, Arthur clears his throat.

“Your lot have been getting bolder,” he says quietly. “You’ve been coming closer and closer to our compound. Why is that, exactly?”

Em shrugs yet again. There’s really only one answer to that, and it’s not one Arthur will like—that food’s been getting awfully scarce for them lately. He doesn’t think he’ll win any points with that humanitarian approach.

Arthur lets out a low, humorless laugh. “Deadwalkers on the one hand, human fringe groups on the other…I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but quite frankly it’s a miracle we’re as stable as we are.”

 _Who do you think I’m going to tell?_ He doesn’t bother trying to communicate that. There’s got to be a reason Arthur’s telling him any of this, and sure enough he takes a deep breath and:

“I need to get back. I need to tell my—I need to tell everyone who we’ve lost. They deserve to know for sure, and not to wonder. Percy and Leon, they had friends back home, and Gwen—” The girl’s name seems to stick in his throat, making the next words somewhat thicker. “Gwen’s got a brother in the compound. Elyan. Our weapons expert. She was the only family he had left.”

Em doesn’t remember a female corpse apart from Morgana, but then he hadn’t really been paying attention. Trying to smuggle a living person out amongst the dead had sort of demanded his full attention. And speaking of her, he doesn’t miss that Arthur doesn’t mention Morgana in his litany of the dead. His own sister, even if her memories had made it obvious they didn’t form the most conventional of families. Hey, when the world goes to hell Em thinks everyone’s definition of normalcy changes. Being dead he certainly isn’t in any position to judge.

But then there’s the request itself, which isn’t exactly a surprise. Actually, Em’s more surprised that Arthur’s bothering to explain himself.

It’s not an unreasonable request. It’s the only thing he could’ve expected, right? What else is he going to do with Arthur? He isn’t a pet, he’s a fussy and obnoxious human being who probably likes practicing his headshots when he gets bored, and that’s not something Em feels a burning need to witness firsthand. And then there’s the food issue, and the confinement issue, and the only-human-among-dozens-of-zombies issue. _Why save him if you were only going to delay the inevitable?_

Right. So, returning him. It’s the…well, it’s the human thing to do, isn’t it?

_So why do I feel shitty about it?_

Em clears his throat a few times (as if it’ll help) and tries to cheat on his opening _h_ , huff out a breath instead of actually trying to form a letter proper, and it seems to work all right:

“Have…to…wwait.”

Arthur frowns. “Wait? Why?”

_Right, yes, why would that be, Em? Think, you nit, think._

“Th…they’ll…rrr—” Oh, _fuck_ the letter R. Honestly. This could take all day. “Rrremember.” **_There_** _we go._ “Have…to…ffforget.”

Well. It’s reasonably true. And nobody said he had to be a saint about this, either.

“How long?” Arthur asks impatiently.

 _How about you stop asking me questions?_ “Fffew…daaays.” There. That sounds all right, doesn’t it?

Arthur seems to think so, because he settles back in his seat with a more resigned air than he sat down with.

“A few days.”

Em nods.

At length Arthur sighs and stows his knife in his belt. And that reminds Em of the last thing on today’s to-do list.

He staggers over and reaches for the knife without thinking, and Arthur’s got it out and pointed his way again in a heartbeat. Em would roll his eyes, but in the long run this just makes his task easier, so he lets it go. Reaches out, grabs Arthur’s wrist and uses it to put the blade to his own forearm. He drags the edge across the skin until there’s a line of deep red, almost black.

Arthur watches wordlessly as Em dips two fingers into the cut and brings them to Arthur’s face, carefully painting two marks along his jawline. He brings his other hand up slowly ( _like trying not to spook a baby deer_ , he thinks and almost laughs) and tilts Arthur’s face to the side so he can draw another two marks. Astonishingly, Arthur lets him.

 _That should do it_ , he thinks with satisfaction.

“This…” Arthur gestures to the marks, voice quiet. “Ah. Safe?”

Em almost smiles.

He nods instead and backs off, plopping back into his own seat and trying to ignore the odd sensation, the thrumming in his ears. If he didn’t know better, he’d think it was his heart pounding.

As it stands, he’s probably just an idiot.

He realizes he’s still staring and tries to remember to blink. Humans find it unnerving when people don’t blink, he thinks that’s probably still true. Arthur must notice him trying because he looks away and clears his throat.

“So,” he says uncomfortably. “A few days. What does one do for entertainment around here?”

Em thinks about it, he really does. And not just because it offers a distraction from the complete creeper he’s just made of himself (being dead doesn’t mean you have to be a _creeper_ , and he may not remember his mother but he thinks she would probably be very ashamed of him right now). He thinks about it until Arthur is blinking impatiently and Em fancies he can see his fingers twitching for the knife again.

And then, because he doesn’t have the energy to say _haven’t the foggiest, I usually just nap_ , he gives another helpless shrug.

Arthur lets his head drop back against the seat and lets out a long groan.


	8. Chapter 8

.

**_Chapter Eight_ **

**_ _ **

**_._ **

That’s the first day. The second is the longest.

Arthur spends much of it pacing the length of the plane restlessly, like a giant cat crammed into a small enclosure. The pacing gets irksome really fast, but Em hasn’t forgotten the various blades his houseguest has strapped to his person, so he keeps his mouth shut about it. He knows there’s not room enough inside for any other sort of physical activity. If walking back and forth like he’s trying to wear a tread in the flooring makes Arthur feel a little less murderous, Em’s fine with it.

Still, he doesn’t think it’s going to keep him entertained for long.

And he’s right. The third day, Arthur starts poking around Em’s collection of knickknacks and actually asking questions, which Em thinks is probably a dangerous sign of boredom—taking interest in the personal habits of a zombie? Madness must shortly follow.

“Where’d this come from, then?” Arthur asks, poking at Em’s dragon mobile.

“Fffound…in…hhouse.” It’d been another abandoned neighborhood; there’re a lot of those floating around now, it being a freshly post-apocalyptic world and all. Em’s found a lot of his of his collection in places like that.

“And this?” Salt and pepper shakers.

“Ssside…of…rrroad.”

Arthur wanders over to the door of the plane, prods gently at the carved wooden figure there. “This?”

Em opens his mouth to answer and then shuts it. He shrugs when Arthur looks at him.

“Don’t…rr…rrremember.”

It’s not even a lie. He can only assume that, too, was a find made too close to the day he became a member of the walking undead. Memories are almost impossible to fish out of that blurry area. Does it span days? Months? More? Em has no idea, and he doesn’t particularly care to know.

His houseguest stops asking questions after that. Instead he sits and broods and stares out the window. Em’s not sure what he could possibly be looking at—new cracks in the tarmac? Fascinatingly shaped clouds? The middle distance? The stillness worries him, as does the increasing silence; Arthur seems like the kind of person to bottle things up until they explode in a Molotov cocktail of unpleasantness, and the quiet feels too like the time before a fuse burns to nothing to be comforting.

That night he gives up. When Arthur finally gets up to use the plane’s bathroom, Em reaches into his pocket.

Morgana’s brain hasn’t dried out completely. The second bite isn’t as…well, flavorful as the first, but the time passed will have only increased the clarity of the memories. Memories age well. Em leans back in his seat and waits for one to hit him, hopefully one that’ll give him an idea to keep Arthur from going stir-crazy.

.

_The blade whirls through the air, graceful, half a second away from taking my head off. I’ve got a little neck, so I don’t doubt it would manage if I let it._

_I have no intention of letting it._

_I duck underneath the edge, feel the wind left in its wake stir my hair. I’m already sweeping my leg sideways, trying to knock my opponent on his arse. But I’ve used the same trick before, and he notices; leaps up like he’s a child again, jumping rope, and brings the machete down in a hacking motion. I bring my own up to block, and the resulting clash of metal on metal rings in my ears._

_Stalemate, then. He presses, trying to get me on my back through sheer strength, and it’s starting to work. Sweat is running down the back of my neck. My arms are beginning to ache. I can’t hold him off for long like this._

_I see the glint of triumph in his eyes and it renews my determination. I won’t lose to him._

_I shove upwards once, quick, with all of my strength; it surprises him off-balance for a second, and that’s all I need. I’m on my feet, behind him before he can so much as blink, bringing my machete up to rest at his throat._

_And that, I tell him, is the third time you’ve died today. Well done._

_He scowls as I back away._

_I go easier because I’m facing a woman, he says. I raise my eyebrows._

_Oh? And when it’s a dead woman, will you hesitate then?_

_He doesn’t seem to have an answer for that. I could let it go here, I know, but going easy on people has never been in my nature. And no matter how he denies it when it suits him, that is a trait we share._

_Just because you’ve seen through one move, don’t assume you’ve seen through them all, I tell him, ignoring the way he sits down on the concrete and rolls his eyes. He’s fifteen, I remind myself, fighting for patience. I was the same at fifteen. I was worse._

_Don’t get cocky, I continue. And never underestimate a cornered opponent._

_I don’t see the point of this, he mutters. Deadwalkers aren’t trained fighters. I’ve never heard of one using a blade, either._

_All the better for you, I reply tartly. You’ll be prepared for the worst. God knows the worst is usually what ends up happening._

_Your optimism is astounding._

_Look around you, Arthur, I snap, patience evaporating. Do you see anything that lends itself to optimism? Anything at all?_

_Part of me hopes he’ll come back with some smartarse retort like he normally does. I want him to fight me on this. I want him to say yes, here, here is something worth fighting for. Because Arthur has always had this way of making people believe what he says. He makes people want to believe there’s something better out there. That any of us have a future._

_I want him to prove me wrong, just this once. I wait._

_But he says nothing, drops his gaze to the machete in his hands, and I feel my heart drop with it._

_I sink down next to him._

_He’s growing up, my baby cousin-turned-brother. Starting to fill out those lanky lines he carried around as a little boy. He even has a proper jawline now, and his hair’s getting overlong—it’s going to start getting into his eyes soon, and then Uther will tear him a new one. I make a mental note to give him a trim soon._

_Even with the military haircut, he’ll grow into a heartbreaker. Somehow that realization makes me feel old._

_But then, I’ve felt old for a long time. When my father—when Gorlois died I thought I’d turned into an old woman overnight, brittle and fragile. But Uther was my new father and he expected me to soldier on, to **be** a soldier, and so I was. I barely remember another way to be. Certainly there’s no room for teenagers in this new world of ours._

_I wish there could’ve been. I wish I could’ve been one, and I wish Arthur could grow into a man mentally as he is physically—one step at a time._

_But he can’t._

_And I can’t say any of this to him. So I flick his ear to get his attention and smirk as he yelps._

_I can show you how to throw someone over your shoulder, if you like, I say._

_His face lights up. It’s not exactly a reason to be optimistic, but…well, maybe it is._

_He’s a quick learner too, and before I know it I’m in the air, flying, and then falling and falling and—_

.

Em jolts back to the present as Arthur slinks into his seat. There’s a bitter aftertaste on his tongue, and he’s not sure if it’s the brain or the memories inside of it. Is it possible for brains to go bad? He’s never kept one around long enough to know. It’s kind of disconcerting.

But it did get the job done. Squinting out the window—the sun’s going down—Em starts to work out his plan in his mind. There’re some bushes nearby, those will probably do.

Once it’s dark enough outside, he waves to get Arthur’s attention. He probably looks like an idiot doing it, but his houseguest is still in possession of his sharp pointy implements, so Em’s not about to go waltzing up to him and hope he doesn’t get sliced in half. It’d put a damper on the night.

If Arthur notices the waving, though, he ignores it. And Em, see, Em’s trying to be patient. He really is. Because he gets that Arthur’s having a hard time of it right now, and he gets how that’s maybe kind of a little bit his fault. But he doesn’t take well to being ignored, okay? It’s rude. Especially when Em’s _trying_ to do the prat a favor.

There’s a torn piece of paper within reach of the armrest. Em grabs it, crumples it up, and lobs it at Arthur’s head.

It misses by a mile, but at least it gets him to look up.

“Your aim needs work,” he says flatly.

 _Your manners need work. I could still eat you, you know._ He doesn’t even try to say it.

Instead he tilts his head towards the airplane door. Arthur frowns.

“What?”

 _Not the brightest light bulb in the box, is he?_ Em drags himself out of his seat and walks to the door, putting a meaningful hand on the handle.

Arthur hasn’t moved. Still not following, then.

Heaving a put-upon sigh, Em opens the door. And waits.

The light bulb must finally go off then, because Arthur stands. The frown hasn’t eased up much, though.

“What are you doing?” he asks suspiciously.

It’s only thanks to an inhuman (ha) feat of self-restraint that Em keeps from rolling his eyes. And that’s only because the _force_ with which he wants to roll them might—just might—cause said eyes to detach from whatever nerves are currently keeping them inside of his skull. He’s a fucking corpse. It could happen. And then he’d be a blind dead man stumbling around, feeling for brains, which would be the most pathetic thing the world has ever seen. So. No to the eye rolling. But it’s a near thing all the same.

“Fffollow,” he slurs and begins navigating the steps down without waiting for an answer.

Sure enough, before he’s even to the bottom of the three freaking steps Arthur is on the ground, having clambered over the safety rail and dropped neatly to the tarmac. _Show-off._

He shuffles over to the bushes and starts poking around, looking for a particular shape of stick. Arthur stands behind him with a hand firmly clamped around the hilt of his machete. Em doesn’t bother trying to tell him that nobody comes out this far, and that even if they did they’d have a hard time seeing Arthur in the dark; somehow he doesn’t think that would lessen his houseguest’s paranoia any.

Honestly, being out in the open like this is making him a little twitchy too. But…well, he needs to do something, doesn’t he? Otherwise Arthur will end up decapitating him just for the sport of it.

Or he’ll keep brooding in a silence so loud it deafens, and Em finds he doesn’t like that notion any better.

So he snaps off two likely looking sticks, both about a foot long, and turns to pass one to Arthur. He hesitates, but he takes it.

“What is this for? Another bizarre trick to hide me from the rest of your crowd?” he asks, unimpressed.

“Nooo.” Em purposely lets the syllable drag that time. Arthur’s eyes narrow, and it makes him feel unaccountably smug. Then, “Ssspar.”

Arthur looks down at the stick in his hand. Then he looks at the matching one that Em’s holding. It’s hard to tell in the quickly dimming light, but Em thinks he sees Arthur’s eyebrows shoot up.

“You must be joking.”

Em looks pointedly at the plane. He doesn’t say anything, but the message is pretty clear all the same: _Would you rather go back inside?_

“Suppose being held hostage by deadwalkers is no reason to get out of shape,” Arthur relents. He spins the stick in his grip, testing the weight of it.

Em stands there with his own stick hanging limply. He’s starting to see a flaw in this plan.

The corner of Arthur’s mouth tugs up in a tiny smirk. “Come on, then. Novice moves first.”

There is no possible way for this to end well, Em realizes with a sinking feeling. He rushes anyway, trying not to trip over his own feet and hoping the element of surprise will help him when he swings wildly.

It doesn’t. Arthur neatly sidesteps the clumsy blow and then raps him on the back with his own makeshift weapon. Em stumbles.

“This isn’t going to be much of a challenge, is it?” Arthur drawls at his back. Em scowls and turns back around.

He could wipe that smirk away with little trouble. Arthur’s wielding a stick, not that deadly blade, and Em’s nerve endings don’t work anymore. No pain equals next to nothing he can’t push his body to do. Zombie superpowers: Fingers that will dig into flesh even if they break in the process; teeth that will tear through anything with sufficient determination; the option of a single-minded focus that can narrow the entire world down to a single point, and that point is the target. They are the hunters. Humans are the prey. It’s the way of the world, but Arthur apparently missed the memo.

Em could remind him. It would be easy, especially here, on his home ground. Nobility bordering on stupidity isn’t going to do Arthur any favors, and there’s no one out here to impress. He could at least make a point.

Instead he runs at Arthur again, meaning to shove him off-balance before he swings, and this time Arthur doesn’t move away. This time he ducks and lowers his shoulders and the next thing he knows Em is soaring through the air.

He hits the ground with a crunching noise, which is deeply disgusting. Flat on his back, he contemplates how badly he might’ve fucked up here—he thinks he’s just volunteered himself as Arthur’s new distraction, which could be many different levels of bad.

The new bane of his existence stands over him now, prodding him in the chest with his stick.

“It’s no good sparring with someone who fights worse than a toddler,” Arthur remarks. “I think we have some work to do.”

Em really should’ve just eaten him.

.

“Higher. No, _higher_ —you need to keep it level with your stomach. It’ll give you the best possible reaction time, no matter what your opponent does.”

Arthur thinks he can go ahead and add this to the list of things he never thought he’d be doing: Teaching a deadwalker how to wield a machete. It’s surrealism bordering on the bizarre. He’s trying not to think too hard about it.

He’s been trying not to think too hard about anything, in all honesty. And regardless of how incredibly awful Hoodie is at handling a blade, it is at least providing a convenient distraction, so Arthur’s been going along. Playing with sticks like a child and instructing a corpse as he would any of the younger recruits.

On that note. “You need to grip it tighter. If someone knocks your weapon out of your hands you’re finished, so hold onto it.”

Hoodie gives him a withering look, but it readjusts its grip.

Not for the first time, Arthur’s struck with the wonder of _why_ —why a deadwalker would want to know how to use a weapon when it’s obviously not going to be of any use. Gareth could get past Hoodie’s defense and have its head off in a matter of seconds, and he’s the youngest trainee in the entire compound. And zombies have their claw-stiff fingers and their teeth; they’ve never seemed to need anything else.

 _Maybe this is a trick_ , he thinks darkly, watching Hoodie fix its stance for the millionth time. _Maybe they’re building up some kind of organized deadwalker army and I’m handing them our training secrets on a silver platter._

Hoodie’s fingers twitch and the stick clatters to the ground. It gives it a forlorn look.

Arthur bites back a ridiculous desire to laugh. Not much danger of that happening, then.

“Come on, deadwalker, pick the damn thing up,” he says, managing to maintain his stern drill sergeant tone in doing so. Hoodie glares.

“M,” it says sullenly.

Arthur has absolutely no clue how to respond to that. “N?” he tries, wondering if this is some kind of game. Do zombies play games when they aren’t hunting for humans to eat? If that’s the case then Arthur is done; he’ll just fall on his blade like the warriors of old because there is a limit to how much insanity the world can contain.

Hoodie gives him a different look, but the message behind it is easy enough to decipher. It helps that the thing apparently has two default expressions, one being ‘I am a gormless dipshit and I have no idea how I’m still alive’ (Arthur might be embellishing), the other being ‘ _you_ are a gormless dipshit and I am a single smart remark away from ripping your throat out’. The latter is currently making an appearance, and the fact that Arthur _knows_ this is proof enough that he’s been here too long.

“M,” Hoodie repeats, this time jabbing a finger at its own face. “ _Em_. Nnnot…dead…waaalker.”

The penny drops. Arthur doesn’t even try to hide his disbelief when he says “Em? That’s—you have a _name_?”

Hoodie nods.

Something about that doesn’t quite sit right with Arthur. Deadwalkers are by definition walking corpses—capable of movement and some degree of animal instinct, but otherwise essentially mindless. Gaius has theorized that’s one reason they all seem to want human brains. Either way.

Deadwalkers don’t think. They don’t remember.

They don’t have names.

“How do you know?” he hears himself ask. Hoodie tilts its head to the side and Arthur elaborates. “How do you know that’s your name?”

Hoodie shrugs. “Donnn’t…knnnow.”

And isn’t that just a wealth of useful information. Arthur frowns.

“I shouldn’t have to tell you that that’s impossible,” he informs the thing. “You’re dead. You have no memories. You probably saw a McDonalds sign or something after you were turned and imprinted on it.”

Hoodie is outright scowling now. It puts a new tint of light in those striking eyes, and Arthur’s hand tightens instinctively on the hilt of his blade.

“Mmmy…naaame,” it snarls. “ _Em_.”

“That’s not even a name!” Arthur snaps. “It’s a letter of the fucking alphabet!”

He’d been goading Hoodie on purpose, Arthur realizes it now. He waits for another furious response, maybe even an attack; something, anything that will give him an excuse to decapitate Hoodie and take his chances.

He wants this over. He wants space to remind himself why the world makes sense, because nothing makes sense here.

But Hoodie doesn’t cooperate. Instead of bristling again, it seems to deflate.

“Aaall…I…hhave,” it mumbles.

The stubbornness is still there, but the rage has evaporated, and Arthur finds his going along with it.

He’s not a fucking idiot—they all went through mandatory psych evaluations before being cleared for active duty; he can recognize the stages of grief. He needs to rage against something because it’s better than the alternative. It’s better than sitting in that godforsaken plane and stewing in everything he’d done wrong, everything he hadn’t said and never will. It’s better than wondering what he’s going to say to Elyan when—if—he gets the hell out of here. It’s better than trying to sleep and seeing his best friends torn open before his eyes, seeing Morgana’s eyes lifeless and staring.

He hasn’t slept in days.

They’ve lapsed into an uncomfortable silence, staring at one another across five feet of tarmac. The sky is starting to lighten into predawn violet. Arthur knows without asking that they’re nearly out of time.

Hoodie looks down at its stick again. Arthur feels unaccountably like an arse.

“Come at me,” he says, shifting his own ‘weapon’ from one hand to the other. Fighting left-handed will make it last longer, and anyway, hitting something will make them both feel better.

Which is of course ridiculous, because deadwalkers don’t feel either. But Arthur’s had enough of existential arguments for one night.

Hoodie doesn’t move. Arthur sighs.

“Em. Pick up the damn stick.”

His—its, _its_ head snaps up in surprise. Arthur doesn’t blame it. He doesn’t know why he said that.

The corner of Hoodie—oh, fine, _Em’s_ mouth twitches. If Arthur didn’t know any better he’d think it was the beginning of a smile. It bends over and picks up the stick, shifting into an approximation of the fighting stance Arthur’s been trying to teach him.

“So you were listening after all,” he muses aloud. “I wonder how much stuck?”

There’s a different light in Em’s eyes now. Or more likely it’s just Arthur’s eyes playing tricks on him.

He needs to get the hell out of here. Soon.

“Fffind…out,” Em replies, and charges.

.

Day six without incident. Em thinks he’s starting to get the hang of this whole “pet human” thing.

(Not that he’d call Arthur domesticated, exactly. More like a wild animal that he thinks he’s sort of got a read on, but on the other hand he might just bite Em’s head off at any time—who knows!)

More than once he’s considered thanking Morgana, as it was her memories that allowed Em to light on a way to kill time that didn’t involve, you know, Arthur actually killing someone. Then he remembers the acid in her tone when she’d “spoken” to him and decides maybe not. There’s also the whole “not actually supposed to have a dead woman hanging around in my head” thing nagging at him but let’s face it, he doesn’t have much chance of figuring that one out; they’re all basically winging this zombie thing if you ask Em. Either way, he’s pretty sure it’s not a good idea to encourage her. Maybe if she’s ignored Morgana will just fade away.

Yeah. Sure.

But the training or whatever has been working better than he’d hoped it would. And the thing about swinging sticks around like they’re pointy and sharp is that Arthur apparently _never gets bored with it_. It’s made a marked improvement on his mood.

The downside, of course, is that it means Em is getting knocked on his back upwards of fifty times a day. And not in a fun way, either.

Why, why, _why_ did he agree to this? Why did he _suggest_ this? It’s a question that also poses itself upwards of fifty times a day, usually when Arthur is looking down at him and smirking.

And then he reminds himself that Arthur smirking and obnoxiously loquacious is better than Arthur silent and staring out the window. So. Em the Punching Bag it is. Evidently he’s received enough battering to be judged worthy of proper spars, which basically just means Arthur knocks him to the ground with more frequency and more force. If this is what he and his soldier friends consider training, it’s a bloody wonder any of them survive to pose a threat to the zombies.

“Still awake, Em?”

At least he’s started calling Em by his name. He grunts in response.

“Good.” Arthur swings his stick around in one hand. Em would call that another example of him being the biggest show-off ever to grace the earth with his presence, but he’s come to see it as more of a custom than anything else. Arthur’s fighting style is nothing fancy, no unnecessary flourishes or anything that Em can see, so the swirly thing is just a mindless habit. “Shall we go again?”

This time Em’s grunt comes out sounding more like a whimper.

 _Honestly_ , Morgana berates him. _What are you worried about? It’s not like you can die from overwork._

So much for her fading away.

 _Your sympathy is overwhelming_ , Em tells her. _Thanks so much._

_Happy to help._

Arthur looks like he’s fighting a grin. It’s a losing battle.

“Fine, we can take a break,” he relents. “But only a few minutes. Because—incredibly—six days on, you are still terrible at this.”

Something stricken crosses his face at that, and Em’s heart sinks like the dead weight that it is. He pretends not to notice the expression in favor of trudging over to the plane steps and sitting on them.

“Six days,” Arthur murmurs, almost to himself. “Has it been that long?”

Em says nothing. He’s all in favor of trying to make things disappear by pretending they already have.

Not that he thinks it will do any good. He knows they’re running out of time. There’s only so long he can drag out this (admittedly sparse) entertainment before Arthur gets bored again. No, that’s not right—even if Arthur could literally do this forever, which Em is starting to suspect he could, he wouldn’t. Not here. His sense of duty will always urge him to get home, no matter how stimulating Em’s company is (ha).

 _And it’s not like I didn’t know it was coming_ , he thinks, watching Arthur stretch a kink out of his neck. _He wasn’t much of a pet to begin with._

It’s not a very funny joke anymore, but whatever. Still better than facing the fact that he’s going to be alone again.

He still doesn’t know what he’s doing.  It’s still not a new feeling. But knowing that doesn’t help, you know? It doesn’t help him figure out what he’s trying to do here, exactly. Either he’s breaking every rule of his existence and community, or he’s prolonging the inevitable in the cruelest possible way. Neither is a hot option.

The uncertainty just makes it harder to know what to do when he forgets himself, when his houseguest is startled into laughing or going off on some indignant tangent on the finer points of gripping the machete, when he almost seems to forget the differences between them.

It’s fantastic. It’s torture.

It’s making Em forget what he is, and that…that’s no good. It’s no good at all, because then it’s all the sharper when the smile fades and the tone becomes apathetic again, when all the words Em can’t say feel dumb and heavy and thick on his tongue, building in his throat like panicked crowds trying to break through a very small door—so much to say, if he could just _speak_.

He can’t. And that’s only the damn start of it.

Arthur notices him staring, and Em is abruptly glad for his lack of a working heart. Pretty hard to blush when there’s no blood flow.

“Are all deadwalkers as lazy as you?” Arthur wants to know. “I was under the impression your slow movement had something to do with vital functions shutting down, but I might have been wrong.”

“Fffuck…off,” Em grumbles, but some stupid part of him is thinking that he’ll miss this. He’ll miss the banter, even when every word is dipped in cynicism and deep-fried in suspicion. He’ll miss being able to talk with someone (sort of), and he’ll miss having something other than grey walls and dusty knickknacks to look at in the morning.

He’ll miss Arthur, every irritating bit of him, and there’s nothing to be done about it. There’s no life to be had out here, not for a human. He needs to go home.

Em sighs. _Tomorrow_ , he promises, and stands to submit himself to another round of torture.


	9. Chapter 9

.

**_Chapter Nine_ **

**__ **

.

 _Deadwalker_.

Em frowns at the interruption—he’s stiff, he’d be sore if he had any nerve endings left, and he’s trying to sleep. _What is it, Morgana?_

_I need a favor from you._

He can hear how that galls her, the bitterness she can’t quite keep from getting past her teeth, that she should have to ask him for anything at all. Whatever this favor is, it’s apparently important enough that she’s willing to put aside both her anger and her pride.

Em almost doesn’t want to know. But he asks anyway.

_What is it?_

She hesitates. That’s unusual, and it doesn’t help his nerves any.

At last she says, _I need to speak to Arthur._

The words don’t compute at first. Evidently, even in a world that’s been turned upside down so many times Em doesn’t know which way is up anymore, Morgana still has it in her to surprise him.

_You need to **what**?_

_Arthur. I need to talk to him, and as you’re the only mouthpiece I have at the moment—_

_Wait, wait_ , he interrupts, ice water curling in his stomach. _Have you thought about this? I can barely string syllables together—not the best mouthpiece, even if I am all you’ve got. And then there’s the issue of explaining how I’m communicating with you in the first place, or don’t you think that might get a little messy? I have no idea how this telepathy thing works—like, are you a ghost? A figment of my imagination? Who knows? I don’t._

 _As if you could imagine me,_ she says derisively.

 _That’s not the point and you know it._ He sighs. _There’s no way I could even try to explain it. It’s too complicated, and I don’t…I don’t have the words. Arthur wouldn’t accept them if I did._

She’s quiet for a minute, long enough for wrenching guilt to settle heavy as a stone. Because she’s only in this position because of him, and that’s not something he’ll ever be able to make right. But how exactly will getting himself decapitated help her?

Morgana speaks again, thoughtful.

_How’s your finger dexterity?_

_My what now?_

She sighs impatiently. _Your hands. How well do they work?_

 _Better and better_ , he replies, unable to keep himself from sounding a little suspicious. _Why the sudden interest in my health?_

_I told you, I need something from you. Do you have scrap paper lying around? Something to write with?_

_I could probably scrounge something up, yeah, but why?_

_You aren’t that thick. Figure it out._

He has before she’s even finished the sentence.

_Are you insane? How will writing Arthur a **letter** make him want to take my head off any less?_

_You’ll barely be involved_ , she insists. _I’ll dictate, you write, and then just…find a way to get it to him. Say you found it on the floor of that pharmacy, I don’t care. I’ll say I wrote it before I…_

She trips over herself there, which gives Em an opening to point out the obvious.

_Look, when I said my hands were working okay, I meant ‘okay’. I didn’t mean I’d be able to forge your handwriting without a hitch._

_I’ll teach you. While Arthur sleeps._

Em thinks his silence gets across pretty well what he thinks of _that_ idea. Morgana switches tactics. When she speaks again there is steel in it; he’s heard that tone from Arthur before, but somehow coming from Morgana it sends shivers chasing one another down his spine.

 _You owe me_ , she says coldly. _Have you forgotten?_

He swallows hard, remembering the sound her neck had made when it snapped. _I haven’t forgotten anything._

_Then do this for me._

Em knows when he’s beaten. He slumps.

_What do you want me to say?_

.

It’s been a week. Arthur can’t drag this out any longer.

He wishes he could trust a deadwalker’s word, wishes he could trust that Em didn’t save his life just to hole him up in an airport for the remainder of it, but he can’t. He needs to take matters into his own hands and get out while he still has time.

“I think we’re running out of food,” he remarks in the morning, trying to keep his voice casual. Em blinks and twists in his chair to look him in the eye.

“Allrrready?”

They’ve done this a few times now, run out of human sustenance and sent Em out to do the grocery shopping, as it were. Arthur doesn’t know when the deadwalker’s been eating and he doesn’t want to think about it.

“Yes,” he insists. “Getting your sorry arse into decent shape is hungry work. Hungry, thankless work.”

Em snorts. “Get…fffat,” he warns. Arthur glowers at him.

“I’m not going to get _fat_ off of canned tomatoes and whatever else you can unearth from concession stands.”

Em makes another disbelieving little noise, but he’s already getting up, and Arthur wonders when exactly he got comfortable ordering Em around. A better question would be when he knew that Em would actually listen. Oh, he grumbles and gives Arthur looks that promise unpleasant things, but in the end he listens when it’s important. Maybe that makes up for his terrible ability to follow sparring instructions.

He shuffles to the door, runs his fingers over that little carved dragon beside it, and starts easing himself down the steps. Arthur watches with his heart pounding. Em doesn’t even close the door; honestly, it should be impossible for a zombie to be this trusting.

The thought is ridiculous and Arthur shakes it off. Trust has nothing to do with it. Deadwalker brains are barely functioning, able to provide only the bare basics of motor capability and vicious instinct. They don’t have the capacity to predict possible outcomes. Em has no way of considering that Arthur might sneak out while he’s gone, that’s all.

He watches, jittery, as Em grows smaller and smaller in the distance. When he disappears into the airport Arthur gets to his feet.

The last of the canned foods are hidden under his seat; he pulls them out and sticks them into his jacket pockets. Does a quick check—machete, knife, arms and legs (he’s been living with a zombie, it can’t hurt to make sure)—and walks over to the door. He’s struck by a sudden urge to look back at the inside of the tin can he’s been residing in, the light beginning to pour in as the sun comes above the tree line, glinting off the wings of countless dragons—but he doesn’t. He grits his teeth and gets off the plane and strides purposefully across the tarmac. He figures if he can skirt around the main building he’ll be able to escape notice.

He doesn’t think about what Em will do when he—when it gets back to find him gone. It won’t matter. Arthur will be miles away by then, undoubtedly, because Em is the slowest deadwalker he has ever seen.

The corner of his mouth tugs up at that. Arthur shakes his head and walks faster. He’s clearly losing his mind.

He’s halfway to the building when he sees the first deadwalker. It startles him—he’s got used to Em, with his slurred sentences and his attempts at civility; this one is moving in sharp jolts, its neck stretched to the sky like a hunting dog on the scent. Like an animal in search of prey. Arthur bolts behind the wheel of another grounded plane, heart pounding.

In seven days he’s never once seen another deadwalker out here. This doesn’t make sense.

Peering out from behind the wheel, he sees several more zombies have joined the first. They all have their heads tilted back, almost like they’re sniffing for something—

A bolt of dread hits Arthur right in the gut. He brings his hand to his face and feels the last of a few rusty red-black flakes fall away.

He grips the hilt of his machete hard, slows his breathing and tries to calm down. _The plan hasn’t changed_ , he tells himself. _There’s just going to be an extra step now._ That step being: Fight your way through a crowd of deadwalkers without getting eaten. Straightforward enough.

Arthur closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, debating charging versus lingering—and then a shuffling step comes near to his hiding place and the choice is removed. He opens his eyes and swings.

Em stumbles backward, his hands held out like he’s trying to calm a wild animal. Arthur lowers the machete and practically hisses in his outrage.

“Where the _hell_ did you come from?”

Em throws his arms up in the air like _he’s_ the one who has any right to be irritated. Grumbling incoherently under his breath he grabs the machete blade with both hands and slices them open. His face doesn't register any pain, but it still makes Arthur’s skin crawl.

Em smears the stuff all over Arthur’s face and nods. Peering around the plane’s wheel again, Arthur sees the miniature horde stumbling around in confusion. They’ve stopped sniffing the air, at least, and relief settles in him.

“Ssstupid… _arse_ ,” Em growls. Arthur bristles.

“You said a few days!” he whispers furiously. “It’s been a _week_!”

The stubborn set of Em’s jaw doesn’t change at all, but it doesn’t matter. Arthur doesn’t need his permission and he doesn’t need any more of his help. He turns to storm off, but Em’s fingers dig into his arm.

Very calmly, Arthur says, “I believe we’ve had a conversation about you touching me.”

Em lets go and pushes past him.

“Fffollow,” he mutters. “Be…deaaad.”

Arthur looks at his back blankly. Em turns halfway and mimics an exaggerated zombie gait, and Arthur cottons on.

“You can’t be serious.”

Em rolls his eyes—actually _rolls his eyes_ —and resumes his stagger toward the group.

Faced with a glaring lack of options Arthur follows, trying to copy the inane shuffling motion of Em’s feet and occasionally grunting. This is ridiculous. He’s disgracing every last one of his ancestors by doing this, but as they near the other deadwalkers—and then pass them—without incident, he’s forced to admit that the charade is effective.

By the time they enter the building Em is making strange choking sounds low in his throat. It’s not until Arthur looks him in the face and sees a glimmer of amusement there that he realizes it’s laughter.

“You’re a little shit,” he informs Em, shoving him in the arm without thinking about it. Em’s mouth stretches in an approximation of a grin.

He looks over Arthur’s shoulder and the grin evaporates, replaced by soul-numbing terror.

“Rrrun,” he croaks.

Arthur turns around instead.

The skeleton roars in his face.

.

So apparently Arthur is actually an imbecile who can’t comprehend the word _run_ when it’s being said in plain English. But yes, obviously, _Em_ is the brainless one here.

Ignoring Arthur’s earlier tetchiness about touching, Em grabs his arm and yanks as the boney lurches forward. Arthur wrenches himself from Em’s grip and takes its head off with a swing of his blade; the skull hits the ground with a sickening crunch, followed by the rest of the corpse.

Arthur is staring down at the remains in triumph when the other roars begin to sound, echoing off the walls.

“Mmmove,” Em hisses. “ _Move_!”

At least Arthur finally listens.

They run.

Em’s never run this fast without a human target in front of him. He’s never had to. Heathrow is supposed to be their safe haven, dammit, but here he is, running anyway. Arthur is ahead of him and neither of them is looking back, but it doesn’t matter because the intermittent roars are sort of giving the boneys away. Why should they care? This is their territory. They are the alphas here, and Em’s just a stupid, _stupid_ regular Joe zombie who had to get in between them and their prey.

Arthur takes a hard left and Em skids after; he doesn't have time to question where the hell they’re going or if Arthur even knows where they’re going. As long as it’s in the opposite direction from the boneys, he’s cool with that. He’ll trust that Arthur has a better sense of direction than he does. He’ll trust Arthur, period.

He doesn’t really have a choice right now.

They end up in a supply room Em’s never been inside of before, Arthur yanking him inside before slamming the door shut and bolting it. Immediately the boneys begin pounding on the other side, bellowing their fury. The door shakes on its hinges. Em doesn’t know how long it can hold.

The lights have all gone out in this part of the building, making it nearly impossible to see, but Arthur is already half-dragging Em toward the back exit.

A shadow steps into the doorframe before they get there.

Arthur’s machete is in the air instantly, but at the last second the figure registers and Em grabs his wrist.

“Waaait,” he says.

“What the _fuck_?” Arthur demands, livid.

Will stands there with broom in hand, looking from Em to Arthur and then back again. Em steps hurriedly in front of the madman with the pointy objects.

“If he sounds the alarm,” Arthur begins, but Em gestures sharply for him to shut up. He’d like to get out of this with his skin intact, yeah, but Will’s the only friend he’s ever had here. If Arthur needs to decapitate someone Em doesn’t want it to be him.

He focuses on saying the name like he’s never focused on a word before in his life.

“Will,” he says carefully. Will stares at him, blank. He tries again.

“Mmmove.” He can hear Arthur fidgeting restlessly behind him, knows he’s running out of time. “ _Please_.”

Something seems to flicker in Will’s eyes then, but maybe it’s just the terrible lighting.

He steps aside.

Em doesn’t even have time to thank him, or to acknowledge the cavern of relief opening up inside of his chest, before Arthur has taken off running again. He needs to follow or be left behind.

They run through the airport. They run past dozens of zombies with flat eyes, none of them quick enough on the uptake to realize what they’re seeing. They run until they reach the front doors and don’t dare look back to find out if they were followed.

Arthur runs straight through them and doesn’t stop. Em can’t help glancing behind.

The entire Heathrow zombie community is staring at him, but they make no move to chase. Em sees one face that he recognizes immediately—it’s Security Guard Guy.

Em lifts a hand in an uncertain wave.

And to his disbelief, Security Guard Guy actually waves back.

That’s the image that sticks in Em’s mind as he hurtles after Arthur. Not the boneys, not the blank-faced crowd, not even Will moving aside. He remembers that one simple gesture and wonders if it means anything, or if he’s just too optimistic for his own good.

.

Someone is running. Make that two someones. He watches them go.

One of them turns around at the door. That one looks familiar, but his eyes are on the other. The blond with the blade. There is something, something coming into his mind when he sees him—

_A laughing smile and blades clashing—_

But he doesn’t know what it is.

The one at the door lifts his arm. He thinks he recognizes this gesture. He thinks it’s been made before, but he didn't know then what he was meant to do with it.

Now he thinks he does. It’s awkward, but he manages to lift his arm in return. The one at the door turns around and runs away, runs after the other.

He lingers. Even after the others go their separate ways, he lingers.

Something is itching at the corners of his mind. Something—

 _Bright eyes and curly hair and freckles like constellations, a smile, a sob, a ring_ —

Someone is missing.

He stands there as the sun goes down. He forgets to do his rounds. He forgets that he needs to eat. He forgets—

But he remembers other things.

He _remembers_ …


	10. Chapter 10

.

**_Chapter Ten_ **

**_ _ **

.

Em isn’t in the business of blaming other people for his problems. Really, he isn’t. And he doesn’t think it’s _blaming_ , per se, when he considers the myriad ways in which Arthur has ruined his life. It’s just a list of simple facts.

Fact one: Em was perfectly happy to trudge around the airport in circles before he met Arthur. He was perfectly happy to follow the same routine day in and day out with the occasional break for eating brains. He was—well, all right, he wasn’t thrilled about the whole ‘total lack of interpersonal communication’ thing, but at least he’d _accepted_ it.

Fact two: Em was used to being alone in every way that mattered. He was content enough to venture into Heathrow, grunt at Dred and Will and Security Guard Guy and a few others, and then return to his plane and his dragons and his isolation. He knew that even if he wasn’t actually the most intellectually capable zombie in residence he might as well have been, because no one else appeared able to speak up and contradict him. He got used to having his own thoughts for company, an incessant inner monologue because the other option—total, all-encompassing silence—would’ve probably driven him mad long before anything else had a chance to.

Fact three: Arthur (challenging, infuriating, omnipresent Arthur) has successfully fucked up all of the above.

Here’s the thing. Em is running for his life right now (such as it is), having somehow managed to go from ‘average member of the zombie populace’ to ‘wanted fugitive who will probably be torn to shreds if he ever dares return’ in the space of a few hours. This was _not_ on his to-do list when he got up this morning. And he doesn’t think it’s too much of a stretch to blame his current situation—at least partly—on his erstwhile houseguest.

The skies opened up shortly after their departure from Heathrow, and it’s been pouring on and off ever since. Em’s not sure how long they’ve been walking down silent roads littered with abandoned vehicles; the sun hasn’t shown its face from behind the clouds all day, and if Arthur has any ideas he’s not sharing. He’s not sharing much of anything, actually, and Em’s been too preoccupied with trying to keep up to press him.

At some point they run across a car that doesn’t look blatantly destroyed or even rusted over too badly, and Arthur makes a beeline for it. Em hangs back and watches with interest as he squirms under the wheel and fiddles with a few wires.

The engine roars to sudden life. Arthur emerges with a massive grin on his face.

“Get in,” he says, settling behind the wheel. “Hurry up, I don’t know how much is left in the tank.”

Em does, and the next thing he knows they’re speeding across the grey terrain. Rain is still pouring in through the shattered windows, but honestly it’s not like they can get any wetter, so Em ignores it. Arthur seems almost cheerful about their good luck, and Em feels encouraged enough by that to venture a question.

“Wherrre…?”

Arthur looks at him like he’s insane. “The compound, obviously.”

Right. Obviously.

Arthur’s eyes are already back on the road. Em slumps in his seat, grim.

Of course they’re going back to the compound; was there ever any other option? Em will just need to make sure they part ways before they get there, because if he gets within range of gunfire he’ll be history and he knows it. Never mind that he’s the reason Arthur’s still around in the first place.

 _This is the problem with forgetting who you are_ , he scolds himself. _I shouldn’t’ve expected anything different._

_You’re lucky it’s Arthur with you._

The interruption startles him. Morgana hasn’t said much lately, and when she did it was mostly to laugh at his weapons-related ineptitude. He frowns.

_What do you mean by that?_

_I mean if it were anyone else—anyone at all—you would have been dead the instant you left the airport. Or left to distract the skeletons before that._ She sighs. _My stupid brother and his stupid ideas about nobility._

 _I don’t know,_ Em replies unhappily. _He still might shoot me before we make the compound. Why bring me along if he didn’t want to make sure he got rid of me?_

_Because you were in as much danger as he was, trying to escape, and he couldn’t leave you behind. You saved his life. Arthur won’t forget that._

_Yeah, well, I don’t think he’ll be eager to introduce me to the rest of your friends either. Which makes more sense—let the zombie walk home and tell his friends that not all humans will decapitate them? Or put three rounds in his skull before he ever has the chance? Personally I think the second option’s more likely._

_To you, maybe. Not to Arthur._ She pauses. _Just don’t give him a reason to think your option is the better one._

The ominous note in her voice coincides with the whining of the engine and the subsequent stalling of the car. Arthur mutters and curses and smacks the wheel, but there’s nothing to be done. They’re going to have to go the rest of the way on foot, and the sun is fast dipping below the horizon line.

“There’s no way we’ll make it to the gates before it gets dark,” Arthur says with a sigh. “If I remember right, there should be a neighborhood close by. It was one of the last we evacuated.”

They end up tromping through rivers of mud and sheets of rain for what feels like hours, but eventually Arthur lets out a groan of relief as a handful of houses come into view.

“Come on,” he says, and Em follows.

The neighborhood is eerie. Em is _dead_ and he thinks it’s eerie. The evacuation Arthur mentioned was obviously a hasty one because there are things scattered everywhere. Pieces of people’s lives strewn across overgrown lawns and cracked driveways—trellises for long-dead flowers, an overturned bike, the occasional basketball. A child’s plastic tricycle. Em shudders at that one and stops paying attention.

Arthur walks through the first open door he finds. The inside of the house is pitch-black, but he still insists on doing a sweep of it before they settle in. Em leaves him to his paranoia and tries to hunt down some candles.

He doesn’t find them in the first drawer he opens. There’s a deck of cards there, but somehow he doesn’t think Arthur’s going to be in a gaming mood, so he passes them over. The second drawer has some spare change and a tape measure, neither of which are going to be too useful either. The third drawer has a photo album that he doesn’t touch, because just thinking about what might be in it feels like someone is grabbing his insides and squeezing.

Em keeps poking around, sifting through the detritus of someone’s pre-apocalypse life with as much care as he can muster. He wonders if he was an archaeologist in his lifetime. Maybe that’s why he feels the need to keep everything in its place, disturb as little as possible. Maybe this family will come back to their home someday.

Or maybe they’re long dead, ripped apart by Em’s kind. Hell, he might have killed them himself. He would never know.

Vaguely nauseous, he slams the last drawer shut. He hasn’t eaten in longer than is advisable; that’s probably why he’s feeling so shitty, why there’s this churning in his stomach and an itch under his skin.

“It’s clear,” Arthur announces, coming back down the stairs. “There’s no one here. Living or dead.”

Em grunts in acknowledgement, followed by a noise of victory when he finally unearths a few candles and a box of matches. Arthur eyes them dubiously.

“Maybe you’re in the mood for some late night reading, but I for one am going to have a shower and go to bed,” he informs him. Em is seized by the sudden urge to break one of the candles over his head. “You can sleep down here.”

Em glares, but he thinks the effect is probably ruined by the darkness because Arthur heads back up the stairs without another word.

“Nnnight,” he mumbles to no one.

Sighing, he tries to light a match four times before giving up and accepting that his stiff fingers just aren’t meant for the task. Then it’s a quest to find a clear patch of floor he can curl up on, because finding a sofa would involve making his way into another room without somehow offing himself and he doesn’t think his chances of that are too good. He’s been stumbling around for a good few minutes when a voice speaks from the staircase, making him jump.

“For the love of God,” Arthur says irritably. “You’re completely pathetic. Come upstairs before you brain yourself on the furniture.”

Em blinks, but he sure as hell doesn’t need to be told twice. He clambers after Arthur, miraculously managing to survive the stairs.

“Don’t get any ideas,” Arthur warns him. “You’re still sleeping on the floor.”

Em shrugs. It’s all the same to him.

Arthur takes advantage of the miracle that is a working shower, and Em takes advantage of his temporary absence to eat before the itch in his flesh drives him insane. His mood dips further when he realizes there’s only enough of Morgana’s brain left for a mouthful. Ah well; beggars can’t be choosers. He swallows without chewing, all too conscious of the need to be quick about it—

.

_My father is dead, Gorlois is dead; they ripped him apart like meat and I’ll never see him again, but Uther puts a gun in my hand and says that I can avenge him, and I swear I’ll do it until the day they kill me too—_

.

_Gwen spars with me while Lancelot spars with Arthur, and I notice her distraction and her smiles and I notice Lance getting hit on the backside by Arthur’s practice blade because he wasn’t paying attention, and I’m happy for them both but part of me worries because nobody can be happy for long here—_

.

The memories are coming faster now, in flashes, blurs of color and light and sound rushing into his head—

.

_Uther calls me his daughter and the bottom drops out of my world—_

.

_He doesn’t understand, he doesn’t understand that we have nothing to fight for anymore; I go outside the compound just so I can scream without anybody noticing, scream until I scare the birds from the trees—_

.

_A blade in my hand, pressed to the pale skin of my wrists; I watch as blood blooms from the wound and I feel nothing, I feel nothing—_

.

_Arthur, exasperated with me—_

.

_My baby cousin smiling at me—_

.

_A deadwalker in a red hoodie; I’ve shot him but it’s only pissed him off and he rushes at me, pulls me from the desk I’m standing on and then painpainpainreliefohgod—_

.

Em gags, spits out whatever’s left of the mouthful and gasps for air. Bile is acidic in his throat, burning as he gags.

_Not what you expected?_

Morgana’s tone is stiff. Em wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand; his stomach still feels like it’s twisting itself inside out.

 _No_ , he admits. _Jesus, Morgana, I’m—_

 _Don’t_ , she snaps, warning, and he doesn’t.

They sit in silence until Arthur comes out of the bathroom fully clothed (Em is not disappointed by this, he tells himself, no matter how nice a distraction it would’ve been) and with his hair still damp. He clambers into bed while Em stares at the ceiling and awkwardly fidgets. Not looking, but also trying not to _look_ like he’s trying not to look. Morgana sighs in his head.

 _You’re pathetic,_ she informs him. He doesn’t even try to deny it.

They’re quiet for a long time like that, lying in the dark in a stranger’s house. Em keeps rolling around trying to get comfortable on the hardwood floor until Arthur finally loses his patience and throws a pillow at him to shut him up.

It hits Em square in the face and Arthur wasn’t even looking. Bastard.

Em’s not sure how much time has gone by, both of them well aware that the other isn’t sleeping either, when Arthur breaks the silence.

“What's it like?”

 _You know, I don’t think that question was vague enough._ He doesn’t say anything, too tired to try and get the words out even though they have been coming to him easier lately, and hopes Arthur will take the hint and elaborate. Which he eventually does.

“Being dead, I mean. What’s that like?”

 _That’s a horribly personal question, isn’t it? What if I asked you what it’s like being alive?_ Except that’s not quite right, is it, because Em was alive once too, wasn’t he? Even if he can’t really remember it anymore. Even if he sometimes thinks that with Arthur, he’s so close to remembering he can almost taste what it was like to be human.

Doesn’t matter. He’s _not_ human or living anymore, and there’s nothing to be done about it. He accepted that a long time ago, didn’t he?

So he shrugs and says, “Don’t…know.”

A snort from the bed. “Really. That’s all I’m going to get?”

Em scowls, never mind that Arthur can’t see. What exactly is the prat trying to accomplish with this line of questioning? “Ssucks,” he finally spits out, barely even tripping over the S’s.

“…Ah.”

“Get….used…to it.”

“Yes. I suppose you would.” Arthur’s tone has changed, taken on that stiff, formal air it does when he’s uncomfortable. When he knows he’s overstepped some sort of line. Em struggles to articulate something more coherent, struck by a sudden fierce desire to make him understand—what? That Em is more than this? That he used to be a person just like Arthur—well, probably with much better manners, but all the same?

That maybe, if they’d met before all this shit happened and the world went to hell, they might have been friends?

Might have been something more?

“I…miss it,” he manages. And there, it’s been said. He’s never admitted it out loud, never even properly admitted it to himself, but it’s true. It’s so fucking true and he aches with it, the incredibly frustrating sense of missing something you can’t remember having. All he has, all he can cling to, is the knowledge that he must have been human at some point. He would’ve gone mad a long time ago if he didn’t have that, but these days it’s starting to feel like less than enough.

It used to be enough. But then, maybe that’s just one more thing Arthur has fucked up.

He’s not sure all of those subtleties will have made it across in three hesitantly stammered words, but then he wasn’t really intending them to. Objectively speaking Em’s aware he probably needs some very specialized therapy for this (‘Existential Crises for the Undead and How to Handle Them’; he could make a fortune if he thought any of his fellow zombies could handle a sign-up sheet). And Arthur doesn’t have the patience to be an armchair psychologist.

Arthur’s quiet for a few minutes. Long enough that Em starts to wonder whether he’s fallen asleep and rendered Em’s best attempt at a grand heart to heart a moot point. Then, so quiet he has to strain to listen:

“Sometimes I think it must be easier for all of you. Not feeling anything.” He clears his throat. “Morgana—my sister—she thought we were fighting a losing battle, all of us. She didn’t always say it, but it was always there. I know she hadn’t had any hope for a long time when she died. Sometimes I think she—”

Arthur’s voice cracks and the stream of words abruptly cuts itself off. Em doesn’t move, staring at the shadowy ceiling and contemplating the many, many reasons he deserves the eventual headshot Arthur will fire at him.

Because there’s no other way for this to end. Em likes to think of himself as an optimist, but he’s not actually an idiot. There’s no version of this where he comes out in one piece, and he thinks maybe he’s okay with that. Maybe if he manages to get Arthur home intact, accomplishes that one little bit of good in his undead existence, he won’t fear whatever comes after the headshot quite so much.

“Sometimes,” Arthur bites out, sounding like he’s trying to get everything out at once before he loses his nerve or his voice, “I wonder if she did it on purpose. She was always a better strategist than I was—could see everything coming, saw five steps ahead of the rest of us. Brilliant aim with a shotgun, too, she—I wonder sometimes if she came out on that last supply run with me looking to die.”

There’s nothing Em can say to that, really. Morgana makes a choked sound in the back of his mind and he doesn’t dare ask whether her brother is right.

But he does remember that look that’d been in her eyes right before the lights in them went out, before Em _put_ them out with his own two hands—that spark of defiance. Of something he’d thought was a dare, something he thought he’d deluded himself into interpreting as relief.

Sounds like it may not have been so delusional after all.

Arthur is still talking, hemorrhaging secrets like he can’t stop. “Sometimes I wonder whether she’s—whether she was right about all of it. Whether we shouldn’t just give in and go out in a blaze of glory, instead of this—this withering away, week by week. We’re surviving, not living. Some days I don’t know what makes us different from you.”

A sharp intake of breath, like too much has been said. Then, when Em doesn’t say anything in response, a low, shaky-sounding laugh.

“Wouldn’t that be a laugh. Us tripping over ourselves trying to kill you when we’re not even that far off from deadwalkers ourselves. What a farce.”

 _That’s not true_ , Em wants to say, wants to scream. Wants to climb onto that bed and grab Arthur by the shoulders and shake him until he realizes what colossal bullshit has just come out of his mouth. _You can still try, you can still do better, you can still fucking **feel** , dammit, don’t you realize I would do **anything** to have that back? To even remember for a fucking second what it was like?_

And he’s furious with Morgana too, suddenly, if she really did throw in the towel like Arthur suspects she did. _I would have sawed off my own arm with my **teeth** to have your life. Instead I just took your mind and your memories and that used to be enough, fuck, why isn’t it enough anymore?_

He doesn’t know how to say any of that in five syllables or less, and the limitation has never been so frustrating as it is now. And he knows part of it is the guilt that comes with knowing Arthur doesn’t open up like this, doesn’t talk like this, is actually letting himself be vulnerable for the sake of communicating with a zombie. An emotional vulnerability rather than a physical one, fine, but either one can get you killed.

Em killed his sister. Em killed his sister and Arthur is talking to him like a friend.

It’s more than he can take, and the knowledge burns away his anger.

“Sorry,” he whispers.

Arthur’s reply is a confused “What?” but Em doesn’t bother replying to it, doesn’t bother trying to explain with words. He’s not very good with them anyway. He’s too busy fumbling in his pockets for the bracelet, that thick shining thing he’d pulled off of Morgana’s wrist after he’d smashed her head against the floor.

It feels hot in his palm. Scalding. Like a brand: _Liar. Traitor. Monster._

Still, he holds it close to his chest for one more moment, holding back the truth with it as he searches for one last thing he can say while Arthur is still willing to listen to him. Because once Em passes it over there’s no going back. Arthur will take his head off with whatever happens to be handy and then it’ll all be over for good.

“You…you’re…better,” he says. “Better…than us. Ssso…much…better…than us.”

“Em, what the hell are you on about?”

He closes his eyes and reaches up, pushes the bracelet onto the bedside table where Arthur can’t miss seeing it.

“Sorry,” he croaks again. “I’m…ssso…sorry.”

There’s a long silence, then finally a low scraping sound as Arthur picks up the bracelet. Eyes still closed, Em can see it in his mind—Arthur turning the bracelet over in his hands, putting the pieces together and coming up with—

“It was you.”

_I’m sorry. I’m sorry._

_I didn’t mean to lie._

He can’t say that he didn’t want her dead, because in that moment he did. He can’t say that he wouldn’t have killed her if he’d known who she was, because he has no idea what—if anything—he would’ve done differently.

But he regrets the lying now, he thinks, more than anything else he’s done.

Swallowing hard, he tries to break through the fast-growing wall of silence.

“Arthur—”

The click of the safety going off, a rustle of sheets and when Em opens his eyes again Arthur is staring down at him, eyes blazing, past the barrel of a Glock 42.

“Not,” he says in a dangerously quiet voice, “another word.”

 _Under the pillow. Of course._ Understandably, everyone started taking home security into their own hands once half the police force decided they’d rather chew on those they were supposed to protect.

Now that the time’s come for him to die properly, Em finds that he feels remarkably calm. It could just be the aftereffects of clearing his conscience—well, some of it. A bit of it. But a bit less grime is better than nothing, right?

He stares blandly at the gun, waiting for it to go off. At least it’ll be quick. Arthur’s an excellent shot.

“You killed her,” Arthur says. Now that he’s paying attention Em realizes that while the hand holding the gun is still, the rest of him is shaking like the proverbial leaf. “So why did you save me? Why the hell did you keep me safe above her or Leon or Percy or Gwen—”

“Don’t…know,” Em groans, frustrated beyond belief because he’s been trying to answer that question himself ever since he first smeared blood on Arthur’s face. He could say it’s because of Morgana, that livid voice in his head swearing to haunt him if he killed her brother, but that would just be another lie. Ever since he first set eyes on Arthur in that damned pharmacy there’s been something different about him, but fuck if Em knows what it is.

“Not good enough.” Arthur’s tone is sharp.

“I…don’t… _know_ ,” Em repeats. Arthur responds by firing a warning shot barely a hair’s width above Em’s skull.

“Figure it out,” he says crisply.

“Had…to…keep you…sssafe,” Em says miserably. “Couldn’t…kill. Couldn’t…do it.”

_Just shoot me. Just shoot me and fucking end it._

_Don’t make me say it._

Arthur keeps his finger on the trigger, keeps the barrel pointed directly between Em’s eyes. In the dark his face is impossible to read. Em starts to wonder grimly if he should make a sudden movement or something to startle Arthur into firing, because this whole waiting thing is absolute torture.

Finally Em hears a _click_ and his eyes close on instinct.

_Well, Morgana, here’s to us both having better luck in the next life._

The gun doesn’t go off. Oblivion doesn’t sweep grandiosely out of the abyss to swallow him up. It’s all very confusing.

There’s the sound of movement.

Cautiously, Em opens his eyes.

It takes him a second to find Arthur again, standing in the doorway with his back to Em. The Glock is still in his hand, but the safety has been put back into place.

Arthur doesn’t turn around when he speaks.

“If I ever see your face again, you have my word that I will put a bullet through it.”

And then he’s gone.

Leaving Em flat on his back on the cold hardwood floor of a stranger’s house, feeling like something’s been ripped out of him, staring at the empty space where Arthur had been until long after he’s gone.


	11. Chapter 11

.

**_Chapter Eleven_ **

**_ _ **

.

_I’m dreaming. I know because there are living people standing nearby and I don’t feel a need to eat them. I don’t feel a need to do anything at all, actually. The sun is shining bright from a clear blue sky and there’s a bit of a breeze and it feels like every picturesque early summer day in every book written ever. It feels amazing. I don’t want it to go away._

_Every day should feel like this._

_The group is lounging on a picnic blanket. A gorgeous dark-haired girl with green eyes stretches languidly, a cigarette dangling from her lips._

_“Run for Prime Minister,” she says decidedly. “Take advantage of the world just getting back on its feet to rearrange things as I see fit.” She turns to a black girl with a mess of curly hair and freckles across her nose. “What about you, Gwen?”_

_Gwen hums thoughtfully. “It’s not too exciting, but I think what I’d like to do first is eat something fresh, you know? Something that hasn’t come out of a can, nothing with preservatives. I’d like to go for a walk and just pick something off of a tree and eat it and not have to worry about where it came from.”_

_Her tone is dreamy. Morgana laughs._

_“I suppose you could help me take over the world after you’ve had your apple. All right then.” She passes the cigarette to the third person on the blanket, and this one I recognize on sight. “Arthur?”_

_He takes a drag before passing it back. (And I wonder when he stopped smoking. He never smelled like ash to me.)_

_“If the world went back to normal tomorrow,” he says slowly, “I think I’d like to fly again.”_

_Morgana arches a perfect eyebrow. “Did our old world have magic you forgot to mention, dear brother?”_

_“On a plane, you harpy,” Arthur retorts, shoving her lightly in the arm. There’s no heat to it at all. Gwen is smiling fondly at them both like they’re a pair of kittens who’ve got into some string. Arthur’s smiling as well, slightly crooked teeth white against suntanned skin, like he’s about to start laughing. (He’s got freckles too. I never noticed that before.) Even Morgana looks softer than she did when I—_

_She looks up at me, sharp and sudden, like she knew I was thinking about her._

_“What are you doing here?”_

_Her tone is sharp, all traces of softness gone. Gwen frowns at me from over her shoulder._

_I hesitate. I’ve never been fantastic at, you know, speaking English when put on the spot. Not like I’ve been doing it my whole life or anything._

_“I don’t know,” I say honestly, and the words come out smooth without a problem. Like my vocal cords have been oiled after rusting away for years. If it weren’t for that disturbingly intense look on Morgana’s face it would feel a lot more incredible than it does._

_“You have no place here,” she informs me. “You’re dead.”_

_“So are you,” I say, annoyed. She scowls._

_“And whose fault is that, exactly?”_

_“Give it a rest,” Arthur cuts in, sighing. “Both of you. Can we just…not fight, for five minutes? All we do is fight. I think we deserve a break once in awhile.”_

_“Arthur’s right,” Gwen says. She gives me an encouraging smile. “Come on, then. You can sit down if you want. We were just talking about what we would do first if a miracle happened and everything went back to normal tomorrow.”_

_“I’m not really sure I could do anything,” I say carefully. I don’t make a move towards the blanket, since Morgana still looks like she might shiv me if I try. “Wouldn’t the world going back to normal involve all of us—the deadwalkers, I mean—all of us disappearing? Or dying permanently or whatever? Not a load of options to choose from there.”_

_“Em,” Gwen says gently. “This is your dream. Let’s pretend for a minute that any of us stand a chance of a happy ending, all right?”_

_“It is not his dream,” Morgana mutters. “It’s impossible. He’s dead.”_

_I ignore her. Gwen’s right. I’m allowed to pretend._

_Problem is, I can’t remember anything from the old world off the top of my head. I close my eyes for a second to try and think._

_“Flying,” I decide. “Flying sounds pretty brilliant, actually.”_

_Morgana rolls her eyes. “You can’t just steal from Arthur.”_

_“It’s not stealing. He just said it first.” As I say it I realize that it’s true. Airplanes are the closest mankind’s ever got to the birds and the dragons, the closest I’ll ever have to wings whether my heart starts beating tomorrow or not. I’ve always had a thing about flying, even if Mum could never afford a ticket. Even if we had nowhere to go that would require one in the first place._

_Then I start, because in all my attempts at breaking into the locked safe of my old memories there’s never been an ‘always’ to look back at._

_Or a Mum._

_“You really are something, aren’t you?”_

_Arthur’s voice startles me out of my epiphany._

_“Why do you say that?”_

_“I’m not entirely sure.” It’s nice, I realize, talking like this. Having an actual conversation without hesitation and stammering and slurring constantly getting in the way. “There’s just…there’s something about you, Em.”_

_“Something you can’t put your finger on?” I ask, teasing. Flirting a bit, maybe. It’s easier than thinking about what’s actually being said. It feels like an old habit, which is ridiculous because we hardly knew each other long enough to have formed habits. Clearly I’m losing my mind, but if this is the end result—Arthur shaking his head but smiling still, actually smiling at me—then I guess it’s not all that bad._

_“I think you’re waking up,” he says slowly, looking around. I follow his gaze. Gwen and Morgana have disappeared to who-knows-where. Something in my gut clenches tight._

_“I don’t want to wake up.”_

_Arthur gives a little half-shrug. “Not like it’s forever.”_

_“It is, though.”_

_“Doesn’t have to be.”_

_“The dead don’t dream.”_

_“I suppose you’d know more about that than I would.” He looks at me thoughtfully._

_“But then…if the dead don’t dream, then what exactly are you?”_

.

It’s a long walk back to the compound. Too long. Too much time for Arthur to think.

He tries to keep himself focused on the practicalities. Say it’s a five-mile walk; it’s an overcast day so the odds of him getting dehydrated aren’t as bad as they would otherwise be, that’s something in his favor. He’d dug through the fridge at the house they’d—he’d been staying at, and most of the food had gone bad a long time ago but there were some good old-fashioned canned standbys and a backpack that was still in one piece. He’d even found a water bottle and filled it up before leaving.

And the Glock. That’s already proven itself useful.

But that’s something he’s not thinking about.

So he walks, and he walks, and he walks until his legs and lungs are both burning. Occasionally he stops to crack open a can of beans or whatever (and wish he had some toast to put them on). Occasionally he takes five to avoid overexerting himself, not sure how long the aftereffects of a concussion are supposed to last and not willing to take chances when he’s nearly home free. He rations everything out in his head, times how long the journey is supposed to last, calculates how many steps he’ll take before he reaches the gates, plans for every possible worst case scenario.

He doesn’t think about what’s behind him. And he doesn’t look back.

.

The tall, imposing scrap metal gates of the compound, decorated with graffiti in myriad colors and handwriting, feel both like coming home—a massive relief—and a sense of resignation settling into his gut. Heavy. Like returning to a cage.

Which he knows is a stupid, ungrateful way of thinking about it. If a cage is what it takes to keep everyone safe, then he’ll live in one until the day he dies. It will probably come sooner rather than later.

He puts his hands over his head well in advance of the gate patrol, aware that long hours of boredom can make even the most disciplined soldier trigger-happy, but a smile breaks over his face when he comes close enough to see who’s on guard.

“Gwaine,” he calls. It comes out a croak but Gwaine still looks up.

His shotgun is leveled at Arthur’s chest in the time it takes to blink.

“Keep your hands where I can see them,” he shouts back. “Move slowly.”

Arthur sighs but he does as he’s told and keeps his mouth shut. Gwaine is just doing his job and doing it properly, which is more than Arthur can say of some recruits.

As he draws close enough to be within arm’s length Gwaine pulls a scanner from his belt.

“I’m fine, Gwaine,” Arthur tries to tell him, but Gwaine ignores him and puts the scanner to his eye.

Arthur waits impatiently as the results flicker across the screen and Gwaine visibly sags with relief.

“What did I just sa— _oof_.”

Gwaine pulls him into a rough hug, shotgun hanging around his neck and wedged uncomfortably between them, but he doesn’t seem to notice or care.

“Shut up, Pendragon,” he says roughly into Arthur’s shoulder. “Just shut up.”

He pulls back. This close up Arthur can see lines drawn tight around his mouth and eyes, lines that weren’t there when their team left on a supply run what feels like an eternity ago.

“You’ve been gone for ages,” Gwaine says. “And after what Gwen said, we’d given you up for dead. You really scared the shit out of—”

“Wait, what? Gwen?” It feels like his heart is trying to pound out of his throat and he’s aware that his voice has suddenly gone very high-pitched, but Arthur swallows around it and keeps on. “Gwen’s alive?”

“Yeah, showed up in the middle of the night after you all left for supplies. Told us what happened.”

His tone is grim. Arthur doesn’t need to ask.

He puts a hand on Gwaine’s shoulder.

“I would have brought them home if I could,” he says quietly.

“I know, Arthur. And—” He hesitates, but Gwaine’s never one to hesitate long. “I’m sorry about Morgana.”

Arthur swallows hard and nods, retracts his hand and gives them both a minute to compose themselves before posing another question.

“Gwen, she’s all right then? Not hurt?”

“No. Nothing physical, anyway. She’s been worried sick about you, mate—said something about seeing you dragged off by a mob of deadwalkers. How the hell did you get out of that one?”

Arthur shakes his head. “Not here. It’s…complicated.”

“After all this you’re going to leave me in suspense? You have any clue how many ulcers I already have with your name on them? You owe me therapy bills for the rest of my natural life, Princess, may it be long and fruitful.” The words are lighthearted, but the tone is strained, and Arthur knows Gwaine is only half joking.

“I know. I’m sorry, but I need to talk to my father first. There are some things he should be aware of before he makes any other moves.”

Gwaine frowns, but he nods again. “Go ahead, then. But you owe me a drink and one hell of a story.”

A small smile tugs at the corner of Arthur’s mouth. “Done and done.”

.

Em doesn’t know how long he lies there like the corpse he’s supposed to be. The sun has risen by the time he props himself up on his elbows, but it might be for the second time since Arthur walked out. He’s not sure.

Not that it matters. It’s not like Em has anywhere to be.

One way or another he does get up eventually, staggers down the stairs and lurches out the front door. And he knows it’s asinine, he does, but he can’t help casting a look around on the front lawn. Looking for—what? Tracks? Some sign that Arthur hadn’t been eaten by a rogue zombie seconds after leaving the house, out here where Em couldn’t protect him? Some sign that Arthur didn’t actually leave after all—that he just came outside to give Em a well-deserved scare, that he’s been lurking in the yard waiting to mock him mercilessly for looking like _such a **girl** , Em, honestly—_

He doesn’t see anything. Of course. Nothing but the city compound walled in on the other side of the motorway, what seems like a million miles away. Might as well be, when your only speed settings are Molasses and maybe Sloth on a good day.

He wonders how far Arthur’s got, if he’s home safe already. Em hopes he is. He hopes he helped to manage at least that much.

Autopilot kicks in. He starts walking in the direction of Heathrow. Maybe the boneys will have forgotten his transgression by now, and maybe they’ll tear him apart on sight. On the upside: either way, it’ll take him as far from Arthur as possible.

On the downside: it’s a long fucking walk. Too long with too much time to think and way too much to think about. Mostly musings on how spectacularly he’s managed to fuck everything up.

_I only wanted to help._

But that’s not right, is it? Not completely. It wasn’t just altruism—it wasn’t even a monster choosing one random would-be victim and leaving them hale and whole to pretend, just for a second, that they aren’t entirely beyond saving. Maybe that was part of it, sure, but there was something else.

_There was always something else._

There was always something different about Arthur. Em’s got nothing but disdain for Disney movie ideas about love at first sight, doesn’t think it happens in real life, and that definition doesn’t feel right anyway. It was something different. Not just attraction. It was something—something close to _memory_ , something so vivid and close he could practically taste it, like he’d known Arthur forever when he’d just set eyes on him for the first time. And not in the best of situations, either. It doesn’t make any sense and Em doesn’t think he’ll ever understand it.

 _Maybe that’s what we call love at first sight_ , Morgana murmurs in his head, sounding uncharacteristically sober. _Feeling like you’ve known one another forever when you hardly know each other from Adam._

Em snorts. It makes him sound like he’s choking. _I was trying to kill and eat him, Morgana. Stop trying to turn this into a sordid romance novel._

She goes quiet at that. Em remembers a painstakingly written letter left under his seat on the plane, gathering dust, and feels like even more of a shit.

When Morgana does speak up again, it’s so quiet Em barely feels the words rippling through his mind.

_I dreamt about you once._

Em frowns. _What?_

_Well, no—make that twice._

_What are you talking about?_

_A dream. I used to have them all the time—just nightmares, I thought._ She hesitates. _Until some of them started happening._

A shiver runs unbidden down his spine. _It’s called déjà vu. Happens all the time._

 _Don’t patronize me_ , she snaps. _I spent years thinking I was crazy, dreaming of the world burning down and the dead rising from the ashes to kill everyone who was left—and then it happened. You couldn’t possibly understand what it was like, seeing your worst nightmares come true right in front of your eyes._

 _And…_ Em swallows hard. _Your nightmares, I was in them? Did you know—_

_That you would be the one to kill me? I don’t know. I…suspected, I think. But not all of my dreams came true. I dreamt about you killing me, but I imagined six other deadwalkers doing the same. Killing me. Killing Arthur. Killing us all._

_But…_ She pauses again, thoughtful. _The second time wasn’t like that. It wasn’t even a nightmare, really. Not all of them were, but the good ones were rare. I think this was a good one. I saw you with Arthur—protecting him, keeping him safe. So when I saw you at that pharmacy I wondered…_

Em’s shaking his head. _Visions and psychics. All right, fine, I’m a dead man walking, what’s one more pinch of crazy, yeah? But that’s…I mean, I don’t remember meeting Arthur before. Not really._

 _Could’ve happened before you changed_ , she points out. _Or not. I honestly don’t know; even the good dreams hardly ever made sense. I dreamt I was a queen once._

 _And I’m guessing that that informed your attitude from then on?_ Em teases.

_Ha bloody ha. You’re missing the point._

_I don’t think you have a point. I mean, that’s very interesting and all, but it doesn’t exactly help me, you know? Arthur’s gone. I tried to keep him safe, but it just blew up in my face._

_Not that you didn’t deserve it._

_Not arguing with that_ , he thinks testily. _Anyway, here’s **my** point: It’s over. It’s done, whatever the hell ‘it’ was. Now I can go back to my plane and my dragons and I can eat someone every once in a while and be content with that. Zombie suburbia. Great place to spend the apocalypse._

Morgana lapses into silence again, this time for long enough that he thinks maybe she’s retreated the way she sometimes does. It’s been happening more often lately. But apparently it’s too good to last.

_I don’t think it’s going to be that simple, Em._

She’s never called him by his name. Em halts in his tracks.

_Morgana?_

_Look._

Em looks.

Squinting, he can see another figure coming toward him from the direction of the airport.

_I’m nowhere near Heathrow. None of us come out this far to eat—what the hell?_

_Don’t ask me. I’m just the voice in your head._

It takes a physical effort on his part to avoid rolling his eyes. _Thank you. Very helpful, as always._

Shrugging to himself, he keeps walking towards the figure. Which, now that he’s getting closer, he can see a handful of other figures standing around too. _What the fuck is going on?_

The figure in front raises an arm in greeting as Em draws close enough to see—

_Security Guard Guy?_

And it is, the guy who must’ve been handsome in life, brown hair flopping everywhere and that serious expression of his. Will is standing next to him. They’re surrounded by other airport regulars, some that Em recognizes and some that he doesn’t. None of which explains what they’re doing this far out.

Will nods to him. Em gargles on the opening syllable, too surprised for the words to come out easily, but still manages to croak:

“Whaat…the fuck.”

It’s rhetorical. It’s _rhetorical_ because Will doesn’t speak, none of the others ever speak that Em’s seen.

But then, it’s already been a weird fucking day. So when Will grabs his shoulder and slurs, very seriously, “Trrroublle,” Em decides to take it in stride.

Security Guard Guy speaks up too, because why the hell not, this day cannot possibly get any trippier.

“Bo. Neys,” he bites out. No slurring, just one word clipped and chopped up into manageable bite-sized sounds. Very military. _Hey, maybe he was military_. “Af. Ter. Us.”

Em takes a second to piece that sentence together as Will and the others nod their agreement. And then another second to process how much sense it doesn’t make. Boneys only go after things with heartbeats, i.e., humans. Not zombies. Zombies don’t have pulses, they don’t have anything for the boneys to sense. As long as they keep out of the way the rest of the undead are pretty much left alone.

Frowning, Em looks to Will and rubs a hand against his own chest, over where he thinks his heart is if memory serves, and hopes the point gets itself across.

Will shakes his head. He’s got that ‘ _you’re an idiot, Em_ ’ look on his face again, and Em doesn’t think he realized until now how much he missed it.

“Heaaart…beeeat,” Will says, putting his palm flat over his own chest. The others mimic him.

Em must look as confused as he feels because Security Guard Guy steps in to clarify.

“We. Re. Mem. Ber.”

“Be…ing…huuuman,” Will cuts in.

 _Holy shit._ Morgana sounds almost impressed. _I told you it wasn’t going to be that simple, but I didn't think it would end up being this much of a clusterfuck._

 _Stop helping, Morgana, you’re shit at it._ Em’s mind is racing. This is impossible. Everything they’re saying is impossible. They’re dead. They’re all dead. Zombies don’t just wake up one morning with a heartbeat, and they don’t just randomly start getting their memories back. This doesn’t happen.

_What’s changed? What brought this on?_

_More like ‘who’, don’t you think?_

_I told you to stop helpin—_

Em feels his eyes widen. _Oh, fuck._

_The penny drops._

_But how—_

_It doesn’t matter how. You can pretend you’re not in some maudlin version of a romance novel all you like, but apparently the world at large disagrees._

_We can’t have done this!_ Em protests.

 _Just like a deadwalker couldn’t have saved a human’s life?_ Morgana challenges. _Just like deadwalkers can’t feel, or talk, or think, or—_

_Or dream?_

_What?_

_The dead don’t dream_. He’s known that instinctively ever since he joined their ranks. It’s impossible, but he’s done it. He’s done everything on Morgana’s shopping list of the impossible and then some, and if they’re right—

 _They’re going to follow us_ , he realizes, dread flooding his stomach. He sees the same feeling mirrored in the eyes of his fellow deadwalkers, eyes he feels like he can read more clearly now. This is insane.

 _They’re going to do a lot more than that_ , Morgana replies grimly. _If this contagious heartbeat of yours is spreading this fast, and if this is all that’s left—_

 _Shit. Shit._ “Others?” he asks, looking to Will.

Will’s mouth tightens. He shakes his head, and Em reels.

_Holy shit. And if there’s nothing left to eat in the airport…_

Morgana finishes the thought for him. _They’ve already been getting too close to the compound. They’ll follow your lot this far, and then why not just climb the damn walls and finish the buffet? Sure they’ll lose a few, we have good shots on patrol, but how many skeletons are there?_

 _I don’t know._ There’s a cold feeling creeping up the back of Em’s neck; giddily he wonders if it’s panic. _Nobody knows how many there actually are. A lot._

 _A lot_ , she repeats flatly.

_Too many. Shit. I have to warn Arthur. I have to—_

A new thought occurs to him. _And I can tell him that we’re changing. Shit, Morgana, we’re—we can feel again. This changes everything._

 _This changes nothing._ Her tone has gone bitter. _Uther won’t listen to a word you say; he’ll shoot you on sight. So might Arthur, for that matter._

 _Arthur will listen._ Somehow Em feels sure about this, more sure than he’s been about anything in a long time. _Arthur will listen to me because his first priority is to keep everyone in that compound safe. And if there are as many boneys coming this way as I think there are, both my lot and yours are going to need all the help they can get._

.

Morgana’s advice echoes in Em’s mind as he feels his way along the back end of the wall.

 _There’s a weak spot in the wall,_ she’d told him. _Arthur and I found it when we were younger. We used to sneak out when it got too stifling inside the compound—shoot targets, practice our hand-to-hand combat, anything to take the edge off. He always felt guilty, not speaking up about it, but I think he would have gone stir-crazy if they’d patched it up. It should still be there._

 _What if it’s not?_ he’d asked.

 _Then you’re fucked_ , she’d replied.

It had taken him ages to go around the long way, tromping through abandoned neighborhoods and forest to avoid getting within sight of the guard. The back of the wall isn’t patrolled, according to Morgana, because as far as anyone knows the massive front gate is the only way in or out of the compound.

Pulling bits away from the mosaic of wood and scrap metal and brick, Em takes a second to think about what could have happened if another deadwalker, or even a boney, had had the presence of mind to stumble across this opening. The thought scares him more than it should.

A board falls away to reveal an opening in the wall. He lets out a sigh of relief.

The passage is tiny, and if Em still had nerve endings of any kind they would all be screaming by the time he shoves himself through and into some kind of alley. The fact that his arm is still most likely dislocated thanks to that incident with the boneys and the fire extinguisher probably helps him make it, so he thanks them retroactively for that.

The alley he’s stumbled into is dark and slick from the rain, shadows draped everywhere, but Em can see to a street several feet away. People are just starting to walk around again after the downpour.

It’s at that point, after having been preoccupied with getting into the compound without being seen, that Em has his first opportunity for a proper panic attack.

_What the hell am I doing? It’s crawling with live wires out there. Hundreds of them, might be. This is suicide. This is undead suicide._

A darker part of his mind, the part that hasn’t eaten properly in he doesn’t even know how long, murmurs that he’s standing on the edge of the biggest buffet anyone back at Heathrow has never seen. He could dive headfirst into that street right now, sink his teeth into the first living thing to cross his path, and have flesh and hot blood filling his mouth before anyone could react. And then he could move on to another, rip the throats from the slow and the unarmed. He could probably gorge himself before anyone managed to get off a headshot, and wouldn’t that just be a tremendously satisfying way to go? One last _fuck you_ to a world that’s only ever said the same thing to him?

Em entertains the hunger-driven fantasy for all of a second before forcibly pushing it away. The urge growls at him from somewhere deep inside, something in his stomach and his bones and his blood rumbling with discontent, but Em ignores it. He needs to think. He’s got a job to do here, and gnawing on the locals isn’t going to get it done.

On a list seemingly comprised of only “hardest parts”, the _hardest_ hardest part is going to be avoiding getting recognized for what he is. Outside these walls the city dwellers are always on high alert, every sense, every nerve ending on fire, eyes constantly sweeping back and forth across the area in a world where a single moment’s laxness or distraction could cost them their continued existence. Of course, that’s made it so that the smallest mistake or hesitation on a deadwalker’s part could cost them theirs. Em’s seen zombies shuffle just a hair too loudly and get decapitated for their troubles, and now he’s trying to go all Covert Ops on a city filled with paranoid gun-toting humans; excuse him for being cautious. He has no idea if that vigilance remains once the humans are behind these walls, or if they actually think themselves safe once the gates are closed and the patrols are making their rounds.

He doesn’t know, and he can’t afford to take chances. This is too important. It’s not just his neck on the line anymore.

_Suppose it’s time to get this show on the road, then._

He pulls the hood of his hoodie up, hoping to obscure as much of his undead pallor as possible. (Never mind the eyes, because if one person out there looks him in the eye it’s all over, he’s fucked, no maybes about it.) The hoodie itself is covered in bloodstains, some older than others; Em tries rubbing against a rain-slick brick wall and scrubbing vigorously at the worst of them. It doesn’t seem to help much, and eventually he just ends up smearing mud all over himself in the hopes that it’ll disguise the other shade of brown. He’s pretty sure he still smells like—well, like something that’s died ( _oh yes, quality humor there, maybe I was actually a stand-up comic in my lifetime_ ), but there’s nothing to be done about that now.

He tries to pick dried blood out from under his fingernails for a good few minutes until he realizes he’s procrastinating at this point and lets out a sigh.

There’s no one passing by the entrance of the alleyway.

_Now or never, dead man._

Forcing down the screaming of every instinct he possesses, trying to ignore the relentless pounding in his ears, Em takes a step forward. And then another. And another.

And then he’s out on the street. A deadwalker completely exposed.

His immediate instinct is to turn around, bolt back through the alley and the passageway and hide out until all of this has blown over. There are probably some stray animals wandering around out there; he could live off those for a while. He could probably stave off going boney for some time if he put his mind to it.

He keeps moving forward instead. Tries to stay focused on putting one foot in front of the other and not tripping over anything, not drawing any attention to himself. Tries to keep his weight balanced and avoid the trademark Zombie ShuffleTM that will get him killed faster than his freakishly bright eyes if anyone sees it.

There still aren’t many people out and about so soon after the storm, and at night besides, even if the floodlights do keep everything well lit enough. What few pedestrians there are seem single-mindedly focused on reaching their destinations. Nobody seems to be paying Em much attention at all, and he’s starting to relax by increments when he notices the dog following him.

_Oh, hell._

He tries to walk faster. The dog continues to lumber along behind him, sniffing in what Em’s paranoid mind thinks is a very suspicious manner.

_I’m going to be given away and killed because of a dog. How is this my life? Death. Whatever._

Then the kid appears out of nowhere and Em absolutely does not make an embarrassing noise, no he does not, nor does his stomach take a flying leap into his throat.

It’s a girl, and she grabs the dog’s collar with a glare.

“Cavall, you nit, _honestly_ —”

She stops short and looks up at Em as if she’s just noticing him. Is her glare accusatory or is he only psyching himself out? He ducks his head and tries to look like a casual human.

_And just what the hell does a casual human look like? Think, you idiot, think. Try to project strong Not Dead vibes._

“Sorry about that,” the girl says. “He’s normally much better behaved.” She offers a small hand. “I’m Kara. Don’t think we’ve met.”

_Shit, shit, shit. She’ll know, the second she touches me she’ll know—_

_Wait. Calm down. **Think**._ Em tries to remember to breathe. _This kid doesn’t look much older than Dred, if any. Maybe I can pull this off._

Attempting to feel confident, he fakes a hacking cough into the crook of his elbow and watches with a mortifying level of relief as she retracts her hand, making a face.

“You sick?” she asks, still trying to hold back her dog.

Em nods, making his best attempt at an apologetic expression. At, you know. The ground. Because he’s a _casual human and this is not suspicious at all_.

_There is no way I’m going to be able to keep this up for long._

“Where are you off to? Not exactly a nice night for a walk, is it? I wouldn’t even be out here if Cavall weren’t going mad cooped up inside.”

She’s looking at him with raised eyebrows, expectant, and oh hell, he’s actually going to have to talk isn’t he? Em coughs again, desperately hoping it’ll make him sound marginally more alive.

“Visiting…a friend.”

Kara starts at the sound of his voice. _Shitting hell, now I just sound like something’s died in my throat on top of everything else. Brilliant._

“You really ought to get inside,” Kara says slowly. “You sound like shit.”

Em blinks—he’s pretty sure little girls aren’t meant to be heard swearing, but brave new world and all that—and shrugs in answer.

“Hey, your friend—” _Is that a suspicious tone I’m hearing? Is she on to me? Did I just blow my cover because it sounds like my esophagus has been put through a paper shredder?_ “What’s their name?”

Em blinks again. Kara frowns.

“Another patrol just left, didn’t you hear the gates opening? Some last-minute precaution thing, and you really don’t look like you ought to be out if you don’t need to be. I mean, if your friend’s a soldier. I don’t want to feel responsible if you drop dead in the middle of the street or something.”

It occurs to Em (far, far later than it should have) that he actually has no idea where Arthur lives. Maybe this will turn out to be a helpful encounter instead of a complete fiasco. And maybe it’s the prospect of finally catching a break that makes it so much easier than it normally would be to form the name in his mouth, push it out into the world as clearly and effortlessly as he can.

“Arthur.”

Like sculpting something from the air. Effortless.

Too late, again, he realizes he doesn’t even have a last name to go along with that—is Arthur a common name? He has no idea—but Kara’s face clears where he hadn’t realized it was clouded over and leaves Em wondering if he’s just passed some sort of test.

“You’re lucky, then. Suppose you’ll already know that Uther Pendragon isn’t letting him out of the compound after what happened last time. He’s been stuck in the mansion ever since he got back.” Her voice drops like she’s enjoying being the bearer of gossip. “I hear he’s in a right sulk, too. Arthur Pendragon, _sulking_.”

There’s a definite note of dislike there, and no regard at all for the fact that Arthur’s just lost his friends and his sister, but Em doesn’t have the verbosity or the time to get into an argument right now. He tries to nod his thanks and move past her.

Which is when the dog wrenches away from Kara, lunges forward and sinks its teeth deep into Em’s leg.

“Cavall!” Kara screams, grabbing the dog’s collar again and trying to pull him off, Em trying to pull away at the same time, and when they do manage to separate he’s fairly sure a chunk of flesh stays with the dog.

He doesn’t think twice about seizing the opportunity to bolt, ducking down another alleyway while Kara is distracted.

Hobbling frantically down the narrow path, Em wonders too late if he should have made some sort of noise, something to make it seem like he was in pain. Put on a show.

_I mean, it had to’ve looked off, didn’t it? Guy gets chomped on by massive dog, doesn’t even make a sound? And then just runs off? And she’s bound to notice there’s no blood trail or anything…_

The pounding in his ears is making it hard to hear anything outside of his own thoughts. Even if Kara doesn’t figure out what just happened, she might tell someone who will.

Em hobbles more quickly. There can’t be too many mansions floating around the compound, and he needs to find Arthur. Fast.


	12. Chapter 12

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**_Chapter Twelve_ **

**_ _ **

.

Arthur is bored out of his skull.

He woke up early this morning. Ate something, showered, got dressed. Saw Elyan, talked for a bit, checked out Elyan’s new marvel of contained destruction (some Frankenstein’s monster of gun parts and a machete blade). Went to the firing range to test out said creation and decimated a handful of targets before the damn thing backfired and almost took his hand off.

Went home and worked out. Showered and then slept. Woke up, rolled over, went back to sleep. Rinse and repeat.

He’s in one of those little waking windows right now, fully clothed with his arms crossed underneath his head, staring at the ceiling from atop the covers and idly connecting the cracks in the drywall. Drawing pictures with them in his head.

_What are you doing, Pendragon?_

He’d tried to be useful immediately after making it home, had gone straight to his father to tell him about the hive at the airport. And about Morgana. It wasn’t as if Uther didn’t already know, as Gwen had made a full report, but Arthur had thought it might hurt marginally less coming from him. Maybe.

(He’d considered opening his mouth and adding another item to the list, something about zombies who could think and even speak English—but that was one stupid anomaly, and it doesn’t seem to have made much difference to the deadwalker’s nature in the end, so he’d discarded it and hadn’t said a word.)

The scene replays behind his eyes again. He’d walked into his father’s meeting room in the remains of an old hotel, Uther’s jaw slackening for an instant before he’d ordered everyone out of the room.

“Father,” he’d said, and he’s sure he meant to say something more, but it all seemed to stick in his throat.

Uther breathed his name, sounding completely wrecked, but Arthur didn’t have time to be embarrassed on his behalf as his father took three long strides forward and pulled him into a tight, stiff hug.

Arthur had closed his eyes and clung like a barnacle to a rock, decided to hell with it, he was allowed to be a child for just a few seconds.

He wasn’t sure which of them was shaking more.

Eventually the embrace ended and Uther turned away, giving them both a moment to pull themselves back together and reestablish a time-honored sense of masculine propriety. When Arthur had cleared his throat he’d taken it as a signal that it was all right to turn back around.

“We were told you were taken by a pack of them,” Uther said quietly. His voice was still slightly unsteady. “How did you escape?”

And here, here was where Arthur should have told his father everything, told him about Em saying his name and dried blood on his face and a plane full of dragons.

He’d opened his mouth and what came out was “Deadwalkers have no mind for strategy. The group split up a few miles out from the city. I only had a few left with me, it was simple enough to dispose of them and get away.”

Cool, simple and clinical. Also a steaming pile of horse shit, but he must have taken a level in lying at some point because Uther had nodded.

“And have you any idea why they bothered to take you along? Why they didn’t just…?”

“Blood,” Arthur said. He’d owed him that much at least. “I’d killed one of them in close quarters earlier, and I was still covered in its blood. I think there’s something to that, Father—after that all I had to do was act like one of them and they seemed to accept it.”

“Deadwalker blood, are you sure?” Arthur had nodded. “I’ll have Gaius run some tests.”

Uther had hesitated then. Heart sinking into his stomach, Arthur had known what was coming.

“And your sister—Morgana, did you see—?”

“No.” Arthur had kept his tone as flat and steady as he could. It was harder than it used to be. “I lost sight of her when the fight started, and by the time they were leading me away she was already…”

He’d swallowed hard, traitorous eyes burning and voice wobbling all over the damn place, but from the look on Uther’s face he hadn’t been the only one finding it difficult.

“She was brave.” His voice cracked and he’d hated himself for it but Arthur hadn’t stopped talking. “You know she would have taken ten of them down before they so much as touched her. Probably put a knife through the eye of the one who—”

“Yes.” Uther had cut him off, voice gone oddly flat. “I have no doubt.”

He’d done something wrong, Arthur knew. He’d said something wrong and he didn’t know how to fix it, didn’t know how to communicate his own grief without appearing weak. There is nothing his father loathes more than weakness.

He had tried again.

“Father—”

“You may go.”

It wasn’t a dismissal he hadn’t heard before, but it had still felt like a slap in the face and for a second he’d been a small child again, crying out for his father’s attention. Uther had already turned back towards the conference table; Arthur could tell from five feet away that his knuckles were going white where he gripped the wood.

“I didn’t mean—”

“Leave, Arthur.”

His father had sounded so tired.

Whatever will to fight he had abruptly seeping away, Arthur had nodded to his father’s back, turned and walked towards the door. His fingers had been brushing the handle when Uther spoke again.

“Arthur.”

He’d turned back, questioning. Uther’s gaze had still been fixed on the opposite wall; Arthur couldn’t see his face.

“You are not to exit the compound without my leave.”

Sudden rage had risen in him, bubbling up boiling hot until it was in danger of spilling from his mouth along with every less than courteous thought he’s ever had about his surviving parent. But Arthur had clenched his fists until his nails broke skin, clenched his jaw and kept his mouth shut.

Taciturn or not, Uther is the only family he has left.

So he’d nodded again, been ignored again, and pushed through the door before he could lose control of his anger and say something he would have regretted. Or worse, something he wouldn’t.

And he’s obeyed. Been true to his word. Hasn’t left the compound in, what—two, three days? He’s going stir-crazy. Backups put into place long ago had kicked in when he hadn’t come back from that damned supply run, second-in-commands taking charge of everything he would normally occupy himself with, and it’s hardly productive to keep playing bait-and-switch with the head of any given food chain, so for the moment Arthur is leaving it be. Even if he is starting to feel like a lion pacing in a very small cage. (But if a cage is what works, if a cage is what keeps them safe…)

A knock at the door startles him out of what Arthur’s uncomfortably aware is about to turn into a self-indulgent pity party. He sits up and winces as blood flows back into places it’s long since been chased from.

“Come in.”

Gwen pushes the door open, a hesitant little smile on her face, and something in him lightens.

“How are you?” she asks, and he gives a shrug.

“Bored, mostly. There are worse things to be. You?”

She shrugs back, still awkward, before coming into the room fully.

(There’d been a proper reunion shortly after Arthur left his father’s conference room, complete with much hugging and _I thought you were dead_ s and some tears that couldn’t all be blamed on Gwen.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she’d sobbed into his shoulder, and it’d taken all of his considerable willpower to keep from crying like a child into hers.

“I know,” he’d said shakily. “So am I.”)

“Does Uther still have you under house arrest?” she asks lightly, coming to sit down beside him on the bed.

Arthur lets out a short, sharp bark of a laugh. “Believe me, I wouldn’t be in this damned house if he didn’t.”

Maybe that’s an insensitive thing to say, but Gwen doesn’t react to it other than to look him in the eye and ask another question.

“Where would you be, then?”

Half a second of old film flickers through his mind— _dragons and the smell of a musty blanket_ —before Arthur shakes it away, irritated with himself.

“I don’t know,” he answers. “On patrol, most likely. Trying to save the world one undead corpse at a time.”

It’s meant to lighten the mood, but Arthur doesn’t think he manages that very well either because Gwen’s mouth turns down at the edges.

“Your father’s let Gwaine start going on runs again, you know,” she says quietly.

“I heard. He must be thrilled.”

Gwen hums noncommittally. “Maybe. He’s never been good at standing still. But…it won’t be the same now, will it?”

Her eyes are shining and Arthur needs to look away.

“They’ll put a new team together,” he says. It comes out a rasp, and her answering tone is wet and thick with tears. They’re both a mess, but he has no idea how to fix it.

“Of course they will. But it still won’t bring them back.”

There’s no arguing with that. Gwen takes in a shuddering breath and keeps going.

“Is it horrible that I’m glad Elyan was hurt all those years ago, so he can’t be sent out on patrols anymore?”

Arthur shakes his head mutely, but she doesn’t seem to notice.

“I don’t want Gwaine leaving again either. I want him to say something stupid in front of your father again so he can’t go anywhere until all of the deadwalkers have dropped of their own accord, and I know it’s ridiculous—”

She breaks off and buries her face in her hands. On instinct Arthur looks for Morgana—he’s never been good with crying people, always ended up passing them over to her—but she’s nowhere to be seen.

She’s gone. It’s just him now.

Hesitantly he reaches out and puts a hand on Gwen’s back, starts rubbing soothing little circles like he remembers Morgana doing for him the first time he got completely smashed and threw up, the first time he came home after losing a mate on patrol and didn’t want to get out of bed for days, any other number of times. It seems to break something free, the sobs winding down into shudders, and when Gwen speaks again it’s slightly more steadily.

“I know I’m being selfish,” she says quietly. “Morgana was your sister, and I know you cared for Percy and Leon and La—”

She cuts herself off with a sharp inhale and looks up. She looks like hell, eyes puffy and face drawn, expression tight.

“You’re not being selfish,” Arthur tells her gently. “I know you loved her too. All of them.”

She shakes her head, barrels on like she hadn’t skipped anything over. “I’m just not sure what I’ll do if we lose anyone else, Arthur. I think…I think a person can only carry so much before they break down and turn into something else, and I don’t—I don’t know that I want to see what we’d turn into.”

_“Sometimes I think it must be easier for all of you. Not feeling anything.”_

Arthur carefully wipes the memory away and pulls her close to him, rests his chin on her curls. Listens to her breathing slowly even out and wonders if there’s anything he can say to give her hope.

“I didn’t escape.”

He hears himself say it as if from far away. Gwen stills, pulls back so she can look him in the face.

“What do you mean?”

“I didn’t—it wasn’t me.” He clears his throat. “Someone saved me in that pharmacy. I was hurt, concussed. I would never have left that building alive by myself.”

Her brow crinkles in confusion. “But—who helped you? Everyone else was already…”

“I know. But someone was there. He covered me with deadwalker blood so they couldn’t tell I was alive.”

“How—?” Her eyes widen. “I knifed one and it fell on top of me. It took hours to get all the blood off; that must be why they didn’t find me. But, Arthur—”

“He saved my life.” He doesn’t know why it’s so important that he make this point before he tells her anything else, before he says anything that will make her question his sanity; he doesn’t know why the hell he’s defending Em—defending a deadwalker, lying about it to his own father. But he’s doing it.

“Who?” she demands, exasperated. “Arthur, who are we talking about?”

“A deadwalker.”

She stares at him in silence for a long minute, mouth gone soft and slack.

Abruptly she seems to pull herself back together. “Arthur, that’s not funny.”

“Do you honestly believe I would joke about something like this?”

“No, but—a _deadwalker_ saved your life? Do you have any idea how mad that sounds? Why would it do that?”

_Blue eyes, wide and desperate. “Had…to…keep…you safe.”_

Arthur closes his eyes briefly to dispel the image. “I don’t know. I’ve been asking myself that since he did it, but—”

“‘He’?” Gwen’s eyebrows are in danger of becoming one with her hairline.

“He could _speak English_ ,” Arthur blurts. “He could think, he could _feel_ —I know this sounds completely insane, but I swear to you I’m telling the truth.”

She’s still looking at him like she doesn’t know what to think.

“He saved my life, Gwen,” he repeats lamely. Maybe if he says it enough times he’ll be able to pretend that that’s the only reason he left Em alive after their last meeting. Staring at him from the floor with those wide eyes.

Gwen stares at him for a bit longer before standing suddenly, bringing her hands up to her curly hair and then dropping them, getting all the way to the door and then stopping and staring at it like maybe the wood grain holds all the answers.

“Those things killed my father.” She says it in such a calm, even tone, it’s almost unnerving. “They killed my teammates and my partners and my best friend and my—my _fiancé_ , Arthur, they’ve taken everything from me.”

She turns to face him, eyes copper-bright. “If you’re right—if a deadwalker really did save your life—then every fact we’ve been operating on is completely wrong. We don’t have any idea what we’re fighting anymore.”

Hoping with a slight edge of panic that he hasn’t accidentally precipitated an existential crisis, Arthur hurries to add, “I’m not saying they’re organizing suburbia inside of Heathrow or anything like that. In the whole time I was there I never saw anything else like Em. It was ridiculous, he didn’t even seem to realize he was doing anything out of the ordinary.”

Gwen takes a deep breath. “And…’Em’, is that its—is that his name, then? Do they remember their names too?”

“’Em’ was the best he could do,” Arthur mutters, and why is he blushing? He’s not blushing. This is ridiculous. “And like I said, I think he was just…an anomaly. Nothing to start questioning the natural order of the universe over.”

But Gwen is shaking her head, arms folded across her chest like she’s physically trying to hold herself together. “We can’t just assume that. If one of them is capable of thinking and talking and feeling, as you put it, what’s to say there aren’t others like him?”

Arthur’s opening his mouth to say that it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t make a lick of difference in the end because all the comparatively brilliant motor/verbal skills Em possessed hadn’t curbed his bloodlust, hadn’t stopped him killing Morgana. He’s still a monster just like the rest of them. Nothing has changed.

Yet somehow it feels like everything has.

_He kept me safe._

_He was a monster. He didn’t care about a damn thing._

_Then why did he risk his neck for me?_

This is the current Mobius strip of thought he’s been twisting himself around since he returned to the compound, and he’s no closer to figuring it all out than he was when it first happened, Em’s cold hands cradling his face and covering him in blood so that he wouldn’t be hurt.

He just can’t reconcile that care with the hands that broke open Morgana’s skull.

Arthur’s been quiet too long. He sees Gwen looking at him with concern, worrying her lip between her teeth; he’s considering opening his mouth to head off any more too-insightful comments when she puts up a hand.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” she says firmly. “It’s late. I am going to go downstairs and make us both some very strong tea. I am going to discover what it tastes like when you add alcohol to tea, and then I am going to bring whatever the result is back to this room and we are both going to drink it. That way if there’s any more crying we can blame the cider. All right?”

Gratefully, he nods. Gwen sighs, pushes herself off the bed and leaves the room.

Arthur looks back at his pillow. He’s fairly sure it’s calling to him, submitting a formal request to the effect of ‘ _never leave me ever again, just sleep through the rest of the apocalypse_ ’. And he’s embarrassingly close to complying with his pillow when he hears the noise.

A soft cracking sound from the window. Like something’s being thrown at it with a truly pitiful amount of force.

Frowning, Arthur gets off the bed, grabbing his knife from the bedside table and fitting the handle into his palm.

There’s a balcony attached to his bedroom window, a leftover relic from a bygone age where wealthy people (not wealthy people like Arthur, mind, because he was a Pendragon and Pendragons have dignity thank you very much) had nothing better to do than lounge around on bloody balconies pretending they were performing Shakespeare or something equally asinine. When Arthur was young and bored he would use it to drop water balloons on the heads of unsuspecting passerby. Nowadays he doesn’t really use it at all.

He fidgets with the lock until it clicks open, at which point he is nearly smacked in the face by a tiny stone.

Someone is throwing rocks at his window. Arthur lowers the knife and does his best to suppress a groan of frustration. This is not the first time someone else has tried to revive the old Shakespearean traditions of this damned piece of architecture, and it has long since stopped being funny.

“You’re hilarious,” he grumbles, striding over to the edge of the balcony, “really bloody funny, but I think we’ve all had quite enough comedy for one ni—”

“Arthur?”

And he knows that voice. Is pretty fucking sure that voice is not even mildly acquainted with Shakespeare.

It stops him short.

Before he knows what he’s doing he’s leaning over the edge of the balcony for a better look and—yes, of course it’s Em. Of fucking course it’s Em standing there in his hoodie in the middle of the city compound throwing rocks at his bloody window because _of course_ it is. He doesn’t know how he could have possibly expected anything different.

Which is why the first words out of his mouth aren’t a shout to raise the alarm but rather a hissed “What the _hell_ are you doing here?”

Em brings a hand up to scratch awkwardly at the back of his cloth-clad neck.

“Needed…to see…you,” he replies, voice barely drifting up to Arthur in one piece, and Arthur is struck by the sudden mad urge to laugh until he cries. He’s carrying on a conversation with a zombie in the middle of a city filled with living people. He should be panicking. He should already be aiming a shotgun at Em’s head, squarely between those blue eyes of his.

He did give his word, after all.

The memory sobers Arthur immediately and it must show on his face because Em’s beaming smile drops (and Arthur hadn’t even noticed he was smiling until it was gone).

“Need…to talk,” he rasps. “Please. Im…portant.”

“You don’t want me to come down there,” Arthur says and is proud of how even his voice comes out. “Believe me, you don't.”

Em’s expression doesn’t change. “Do…what…you have to.”

Arthur’s shaking his head, turning away like he should have done a long time ago, like he should have done the second he had the first opportunity, and he’s going to get his gun and he’s going to put the deadwalker down because that’s something else he should have done ages ago.

“Arthur.” Em sounds desperate. “ _Please_.”

His hand stills over the window handle.

.

Em stands underneath the balcony for what feels like an eternity after Arthur disappears back inside of his disgustingly massive house. Uncomprehending. He knows Arthur is stubborn, knows he’s angry, knows he has every right to be, but he’d thought—he’d hoped Arthur would at least _listen_.

 _Stupid as well as dead_ , he berates himself, shoulders slumping. His last window of opportunity to maybe salvage this whole fiasco has just quite literally closed, and he’s got no idea what he’s supposed to do now. Run around like a mad dog, waving his arms and going after anything that moves? Will that convince them that their haven has some serious security flaws and that they should really batten down the hatches now? Sure, it would get him killed, but would it _work_?

_Maybe it’s worth a go. Not like I’m going to be useful for much else anyway._

He reaches up to tug down the hood hiding his face.

A hand clamps down over his wrist.

He turns around to see a familiar face.

“Get inside,” Arthur says quietly. Em can’t read his expression, but there is a machete in his hand. “I won’t cover for you if you’re seen.”

Em doesn’t hesitate, just nods his thanks and obeys. Follows Arthur into the lion’s den.

He does drop his hood when the door closes behind them and is turning to try and thank Arthur properly when he sees the machete is being leveled straight at his chest, keeping them a good foot apart. Arthur is meeting his eyes calmly over the blade.

Em wants to tear his own hair out in frustration. Haven’t they done this already? For god’s sake, they haven’t even made it out of the hallway.

“Not…here…to eat,” he says, exasperated. The response is blunt.

“You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t trust your word.”

And that, okay, that stings, but it’s not like he doesn’t deserve it. Em puts both his hands up in a gesture of surrender. Not that it gets Arthur to yield in the slightest.

“You have five minutes. After that I’m sounding the alarm. Do you understand?”

Of course he understands. He’s not a small child even if he does have the communication skills of one. Snark isn’t going to help him here though, so he nods again and gets down to the business of explaining their imminent doom in as few words as possible.

“Boneys,” he says. “Coming…for you.”

“Boneys? Those skeleton things?” Arthur frowns. “It wouldn’t be the first time. We’ve always run into stragglers when we go out on patrols, supply runs, you name it.”

Em shakes his head frantically.

“No. Coming… _here_. All…of them. Coming…for you. For…us.”

“Why would all of them leave at once? That doesn’t make any sense.” The scowl deepens. “If you’re lying to me again—”

“ _Arthur_.” He takes a deep breath. “Dead…walkers…left. Heathrow.”

“Why?”

Arthur still looks skeptical, but he’s still listening. Em swallows hard. This is going to be the interesting part, but it’s now or never.

“We…remember.”

Arthur’s face goes carefully blank. Em scrambles to elaborate.

“Starting…to live. We… _feel_.”

The machete dips a little, wavers just a little, and Em feels like he’s trying to shout across a canyon. He’s not sure he’s shouted loud enough.

Then the sound of shattering glass comes from behind and they whirl around to see the curly-haired girl from Em’s dream, from the pharmacy as well, standing in the kitchen entrance with all the blood gone from her face and a broken mug at her feet.

“Gwen,” Arthur says in that calm voice. “I can explain.”

Her eyes never leave Em. “Do you need me to sound the alarm?” she asks quietly.

Em waits. He doesn’t look at Arthur, doesn’t want to see his execution order being handed down, doesn’t want to see—

“No.”

He turns in disbelief, unable to comprehend that word coming out of Arthur’s mouth. But Arthur isn’t looking at him. He’s looking at Gwen, and Gwen isn’t screaming or going for a weapon, so Em must have heard right.

“You’re sure?” Gwen asks.

Arthur nods. Still refuses to make eye contact. “Yes. We’re fine here.”

Em turns back to Gwen and tries to emit an aura of not-dangerous-ness.

“Hello,” he articulates. Politeness is always worth a few brownie points, right?

Gwen looks startled at the dead man talking, but she recovers. “Hello,” she says dazedly. Then, to Arthur, “It’s him, isn’t it? The deadwalker who saved you?”

Arthur talked about him. Arthur told Gwen that Em had saved his life. Something warm unfurls in Em’s chest, somewhere in the vicinity of where he remembers a heart beating once.

Arthur’s voice is tight, clipped when he answers, “Yes,” and Em knows he’s in no way forgotten the betrayal and everything else. But it might mean that maybe Arthur’s not ready to chalk _everything_ up to a lie, or a fluke. If nothing else, that might help with what he came here to say.

Arthur looks to him again, or at least to a spot just above Em’s hairline. It’s better than nothing, he supposes.

“You said the others were getting their memories back. Is that even possible?”

Ignoring Gwen’s sharp intake of breath, Em shrugs. “Never…before. Something …changed.”

“Like what? What could possibly have changed this drastically without anyone noticing?”

Em coughs in what he hopes is a meaningful way. It doesn’t really do much other than make Arthur even more impatient.

“If you have any bright ideas rattling around that thick skull of yours, now would be an excellent time to share.”

There is just no way to communicate Morgana’s theory without thoroughly embarrassing himself. Em shuffles his feet and scratches the back of his neck uncomfortably, but there’s nothing else for it.

In a croak, he says, “Us.”

At least it finally gets Arthur to look him in the eye. His hard expression has broken open into disbelief.

“You can’t be serious.”

“Any…better…ideas?” Em shoots back, annoyed.

“Some kind of scientific breakthrough on another continent? Fluke of nature? A viral strain running its course?” Arthur runs a frustrated hand back through his hair, making it stick up in blond tufts. “A God-given miracle? Any one of those would be more plausible than—” An equally frustrated and vague hand gesture that Em’s guessing is meant to encompass _you, me, this_ without words.

And it’s not like he doesn’t agree. God knows it feels like he managed to destroy any progress they might’ve made before they made it, and no matter how he feels for Arthur there’s still the fact that, oh yes, he’s _dead_. Pair that with the other pertinent fact, that Arthur’s been trained since the womb to take the heads off of Em’s kind, and you have a perfect recipe for a walking disaster. Certainly nothing world-saving.

 _How thick are you?_ Em starts at the mental intrusion, not that it stops Morgana’s tirade. _How many deadwalkers do you think would risk everything to save a human life? How many soldiers do you think would defy their orders and their training to spare a zombie? Honestly, you’re **such** an idiot._

Well, all right, he’s forced to concede that point. And another fact remains—that he doesn’t have any better theories and, judging by the very loud silence emanating his way, Arthur and Gwen don’t either.

That silence stretches out into something deeply uncomfortable, during which Em ponders the two highly trained killers in the room and the various and creative ways that they could eliminate him using the objects within reach. Including but not limited to a broken shoelace.

At last Gwen breaks it. “So I was right. You aren’t the only one of your kind, are you?”

Em shakes his head. “Guess…not.”

Gwen exhales shakily. “Arthur, your father needs to know about this.”

“What? _No_.” Arthur shakes his head vehemently. “This? This sounds mad. I know it’s possible, and I still think it’s mad. My father will think I lost my mind in captivity, assuming he cares to hear me out in the first place.”

“He listens to you, Arthur,” Gwen insists, provoking a sharp reply.

“Not anymore. And certainly not on this. Or are you forgetting the deadwalkers killed his daughter recently?”

Gwen bites her lip. Em wonders if he should be grateful that Arthur apparently didn’t mention which zombie was responsible for that death.

He curls his hands into fists at his side.

“Will he…listen…to me?”

It’s only when two identically confused looks fixate on Em that he realizes he must’ve said that out loud.

And it’s only after he’s said it that he realizes he means it.

“Listen to _you_ ,” Arthur repeats flatly. “My father would shoot you on sight. No, scratch that—you wouldn’t even get that close. He doesn’t go anywhere alone these days.”

“Arthur.” Gwen sounds thoughtful. “If there was a way to get Em close enough to Uther to speak with him…I mean, he must go _somewhere_ to be in private?”

Arthur hesitates. “I might be able to—but how the hell would we get a deadwalker past everyone outside?”

“I…managed,” Em protests. Arthur, the bastard, actually rolls his eyes.

“Through a combination of sheer dumb luck and divine intervention, I have no doubt. This will require actual planning and foresight, so kindly sit back and let the grownups have their discussion.”

Em’s half a second away from reminding Arthur who kept _him_ hidden from an airport full of zombies until he decided to announce his presence like an idiot when something else stops him short.

“You…believe me?” he asks.

Arthur doesn’t look at him. He looks at Gwen instead.

“Guinevere.” And there’s the voice Em didn’t get to hear too often back at Heathrow. This is the soldier and the commander. “What did you have in mind?”

Gwen’s mouth turns up at the corner.

.

“Not…happening,” is Em’s immediate response.

Arthur looks far more delighted with the prospect than Em thinks is entirely appropriate.

“It’s the only way this will work,” Gwen insists. There’s iron in her tone that Em doesn’t for one second think he can counter, but hell if he’s not going to try. Certainly not while Morgana’s cackling madly in the back of his head.

“ _No_.”

“Em.” There’s no give in her voice at all. Em feels like he shrinks a little just listening to her. “If what you told us is true, and there is a group of sentient deadwalkers heading toward us with an army of skeletons following behind them, then Uther needs to know and he needs to know _now_. The only way we stand a chance of him believing us is if we have proof. You are the only proof we have. And that means we need to make it to the other side of the city without getting you shot, decapitated, or set on fire.” She gives him a brittle smile. “Am I making sense?”

Meekly, Em nods. Arthur badly muffles a snort of laughter behind them.

“Good.” Gwen manhandles him into a chair. They’ve migrated to Arthur’s room for this particularly emasculating part of the espionage process. Gwen had scurried off to her own home to get “supplies” and left the two of them in an extremely awkward silence that lasted more or less until she returned.

Arthur had spoken to him exactly once in her absence. “How did you know which room was mine, anyway?”

Em had shrugged. “Window. Saw you…brooding.”

Arthur had scowled at the wall and that had been the end of that conversation.

Gwen starts pulling out a veritable arsenal of mildly terrifying objects, brushes and powders and pencils and things. Women are clearly sorcerers because otherwise Em really doesn’t see how this is going to fool anyone. He wonders morosely if he should have just gone down swinging earlier, warned everybody off by way of his terrifying zombie presence. At least then he would’ve died with some modicum of dignity.

Finally Gwen turns to him and starts holding different colored powders up against his skin, muttering about tone and matching and generally nothing that makes any sense. Arthur seems more or less at ease with the process, even venturing the occasional opinion. (Which of course leads Em to raise a very eloquent eyebrow in his direction, which in turn apparently embarrasses Arthur enough to actually speak to him.

“I grew up with a sister. You pick things up against your will.”

“I…said…nothing.”

Gwen just rolls her eyes at them both. Em swears he can feel Morgana doing the same.)

“I think you should probably take a shower before we start,” she says at length. “You’re covered in—quite frankly I’m trying not to think about what you’re covered in, but it definitely needs to go. We should probably burn your clothes as well, I’m sure Arthur has something that will fit—”

Em’s not sure what sort of face he makes at that, but it must be pitiful because Gwen stops herself. And then she actually pats his hand like he’s a small child.

“Never mind. We’ve all got very good at washing blood out of clothes anyway. Arthur can throw your things in the wash while you clean up.” Em sees Arthur open his mouth to protest, but a look from Gwen silences him. He envies her that particular power.

The shower is amazing. It bears repeating: The shower is _amazing_. He’d completely forgotten how incredible hot water felt, never mind that he hasn’t been out of those clothes in he doesn’t even want to know how long—but shit, the _water pressure_. He stays under the spray long after the water’s gone lukewarm, then cold, until Gwen knocks for the third time to make sure he hasn’t gone and drowned himself. In his defense, he could probably soak himself all day long and not get all of the stains off his skin.

But all in all, he’s surprised with how much does come off. It turns the water at his feet red at first, then brown, before finally washing clear as it swirls down the drain and away. Years, maybe, of blood and stains Em didn’t think could be washed off—gone in a matter of minutes.

Maybe that’s some kind of metaphor. Maybe it would be if he were an author or something in life and liked making those kinds of Significant Observations.

As it stands, he thinks, toweling off, he knows he’s done things that can never be washed away completely. All he can do is try to outweigh them with good things. Maybe he’ll never manage it, but he’s trying.

 _And I am_. _This is me trying_.

His clothes are on the bathroom floor when he no longer looks or feels like a drowned rat, still warm from the dryer which feels just brilliant. Em decides that more than anything else about the human lifestyle he misses warmth. In all its many forms.

They’re clean enough, even if he can still see a few spots where no amount of scrubbing would be any good. The hoodie is bright red, redder than he can ever remember it being; he pulls everything back on, fits his arms awkwardly through the sleeves, and it feels like waking up. The same, but different.

Gwen is waiting for him when he reenters the bedroom. She smiles encouragingly.

“Much better. But we still have a lot of work to do.” She gestures to the chair. Em goes, feeling like a man on his way to the gallows.

“Stop that,” Gwen chides. “Honestly, dead and still worrying about your masculinity…” She pulls back with a slight cringe. “I’m sorry, is that rude? Should I not bring up the fact that you’re, you know…”

Em decides that Gwen might be his favorite person.

“It’s…fine,” he assures her. “Used…to it.” Which is a lie, of course, but she nods and gets to work with her terrifying brushes and powders. Em glances around the room and realizes Arthur’s not there. Of course he’s not; there’s been a distinct lack of obnoxious commentary.

“He went to make some tea, since I dropped the last,” Gwen says with a knowing little smile that Em doesn’t like at all. Luckily she drops the subject.

Time passes while his face begins to feel stranger and stranger. Gwen brushes things on and draws lines on his face, and he succeeds at getting poked in the eye with one of her colored pencils because he didn’t keep looking up long enough or some shit like that. He will never understand how women do this daily. Not that Gwen seems the type to do so, soldier or no, and he says so.

Her face spasms briefly. “I guess you could say I was hoarding it. I thought I could use it when…for a special occasion.” She takes a deep breath and adds in a businesslike tone, “Obviously it didn’t happen. And it never will, so I might as well use it for a good cause, shouldn’t I?”

Em doesn’t have anything he can say to that. Morgana roundly chastises him for being an ignorant lout, like he hadn’t already figured out that he’d stepped on a land mine.

After what feels like approximately one million years Gwen sits back on her heels and smiles, satisfied.

“Well, assuming it doesn’t rain again tonight, I think you’ll pass.” She offers him a mirror. “Do you want to see?”

_It’s stupid to be nervous. It’s just your face._

Stupid or not, his hands are quivering when he takes the mirror, and he almost drops it when he sees the reflection in the glass.

_Oh. **Oh**._

Gwen is definitely a sorcerer, because they might not have had a lot of mirrors floating around at Heathrow, but there were enough windows and other reflective surfaces for Em to get a decent picture of what he looked like to the outside world. Basically: Dead. Like a corpse. A corpse with ratty black hair and blue eyes and tragically large ears and a face that he thinks was probably abnormally skinny even when he was alive. Maybe he was malnourished or something, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know anything.

He doesn’t know who’s looking back at him right now. He thinks it must be his old self, his living, breathing self, with a family and friends and a life. With healthy skin instead of a corpse’s pallor, with hair that’s actually been washed in the last month. Even his eyes don’t seem to stand out as much, more striking in their blue than unnatural. His cheekbones still stick out, but there’s not much to be done there.

He feels like an idiot for not wanting to look away, but he doesn’t. Not until the door opens and Arthur steps back in, balancing three ( _three_ , and there goes that stupid little warm thing in Em’s chest again) mugs of tea that he sets on the bedside table.

“We’ve just finished,” Gwen tells him, sounding pleased with herself. “Have a look.”

_Or you could, you know, not._

Em puts the mirror down and tries to swallow down whatever internal organ has apparently climbed its way up into his throat. Arthur’s already looking up, no doubt about to protest the idea that he wants to look at anything to do with this inevitably disastrous venture they’re all embarking on, but whatever he was about to say dies when he gets a good look at the resident dead man in the room.

He stares.

Em stares back.

There’s generally a lot of staring.

Gwen clears her throat delicately and the spell is broken. Em fixes his gaze on a particularly interesting crack on Arthur’s ceiling. _Wow, would you look at that crack. That is an abso-fucking-lutely fascinating crack you have there, and that did not come out at all like I wanted it to._

“He’ll do,” Arthur says briskly, taking a gulp of his tea. And then swearing the air blue because _you don’t just gulp tea when it’s still hot, you nit_.

Gwen’s eyebrows have all but disappeared into her hairline but, bless her, she doesn’t say anything about the strangeness going on in front of her.

“So, Arthur,” she says. “Where do you think we can find your father?”

Arthur clears his throat. Twice.

.

Em stares at the front door for what he thinks is probably longer than is socially acceptable. This suspicion is confirmed when Gwen coughs quietly behind him. He can feel Arthur’s eyes boring holes in the back of his neck.

_Come on, Em. It’s just a damn door. You can do this. You’ve already done it._

Skulked around alleyways and shadowy corners, anyway. Whatever. Point stands. He’s already been amongst the living for a short span of time and managed not to give the game away. He should be able to pull off a repeat performance, especially with Gwen’s wizardry all over his face. He only needs to avoid drawing attention to himself long enough to make it to Uther Pendragon’s headquarters.

Arthur sighs and moves to open the door for him. Em reaches out before he knows what he’s doing and beats him to it, grabs the doorknob himself because no way in hell is anyone going to be tossing him to the wolves but himself, thanks all the same.

He catches Arthur smirking a bit as the door swings open. Em bristles, knowing he’s just been played, but suddenly a rush of air hits him along with a wave of background noise and oh fucking hell there are people _everywhere_. He feels like he’s suffocating, never mind that he doesn’t need air to begin with. The pounding in his ears is deafening.

_Shit. Shitshitshitshit—_

A hand on his shoulder. Em blinks and turns to face Arthur, who’s still looking straight ahead.

“You don’t need to do this, you know,” Arthur tells him under his breath. Over his shoulder Gwen appears to be pretending she’s not listening.

Em thinks about it. Arthur’s giving him an out, one he doesn’t deserve. But it would still be so easy to take it. Easy to turn around and walk away like this has nothing to do with him because it _shouldn’t_. He shouldn’t care what happens to a bunch of humans and he shouldn’t care about war casualties and he shouldn’t feel sick to his stomach at the thought of Arthur’s eyes as lifeless as Morgana’s.

He shouldn’t give a damn about any of it. He’s a monster, and monsters don’t care what happens to the rest of the world.

_Then what exactly are you?_

He shakes his head.

“No,” he says.

Arthur finally turns to meet his eyes, his own wide with surprise. Em swallows hard.

“Need…to do this.”

“Why?” Arthur asks. He doesn’t even sound confrontational about it, just…confused.

_You really are an idiot. I’d’ve thought it was obvious by now._

But then, Arthur is a little slow sometimes. Still, now definitely isn’t the time to be dropping that particular little bomb, even if Em was ready to do it. So he shrugs and leaves it at that.

Arthur rolls his eyes and drops his hand, but there’s a hint of a smile playing around his mouth.

“Fine. Keep your secrets.”

Em grins.

Gwen sighs.

“Can we…?”

“Right,” Arthur says, suddenly all business.

“Right,” Em echoes, turning back to face the yawning abyss of humanity outside the door. He pulls his hood up, just in case. “Well…off…we go.”

And he steps outside.


	13. Chapter 13

.

**_Chapter Thirteen_ **

**__ **

.

_Okay, Em. Don’t panic. First step is not panicking._

Meet Em’s reasonable little voice. It lives in the back of his head (way, way in the back) (behind Morgana, even) and he frequently likes to ignore it. Everything is so much easier that way. Then, when everything goes to hell, he can pretend he didn’t actually have any advance warning. Typically the little voice’s advice is the equivalent of bailing buckets of water while a tidal wave engulfs the ship. Or something like that, anyway.

This time is no exception, the little voice insisting that he needs to _act normal, act like a normal human being and not a clumsy killing machine, CALM THE FUCK DOWN_ while the rest of his brain is drowning it out with a hysterical chorus of _you’re gonna die, you’re gonna die, you’re gonna fucking die_. It’s practically turned into a musical at this point. A depressing travesty of a musical that’s going to end with the intrepid protagonist getting his head blown off.

Seriously, Em can barely stay concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. It was bad enough the first go round, but at least then the streets were mostly cleared of people and he’d been motivated by the goal of finding Arthur and fixing what he could.

Not so much now.

People. Everywhere Em looks, people. Talking, shouting across the courtyard, even laughing on occasion. Arms full with canned food or fresh vegetables or weapons or small children. The noise is deafening, overwhelming for someone used to an environment with all the conversation of a mass grave; never mind that incessant pounding in his ears that he doesn’t have time to think on. Em hasn’t eaten in ages and he still feels like he’s going to be sick.

Someone bumps into him at one point. Knocks him sideways in a hurry to get wherever. Em’s hood slides right off his face and he panics, already searching for an exit when he realizes nobody’s looking at him, that whoever he’d smashed into is already gone.

Gwen reaches over slowly, like she’s trying not to frighten a wild animal, and pulls the hood back up over his face.

“Are you all right?” she asks gently. Ahead of them, Arthur has turned back to see what the holdup is.

Em closes his eyes, trying to block the sound out. It’s like an agoraphobic person reentering the world for the first time in years—which, actually, is a lot more accurate once he starts thinking about it.

He’s not thinking about it. He’s still drowning in a sea of noise.

And then there’s the humming.

At first he’s confused, looking to Gwen for the source of the obviously female voice, but her lips are pressed together and she’s still looking at him with concern. But someone is definitely humming.

_Oh, wonderful. Another addition to the musical of madness that is my life-death-whatever._

It’s like it’s coming from _inside_ his head, which doesn’t help the madness theory much, but the side effect of that is that all the outside noise seems quieter. Not drowned out, but at least dampened a little by that tuneless, aimless humming. It pushes the tidal wave away just enough for him to think.

Em opens his eyes.

“I’m fine,” he says to Gwen. And then again to Arthur as he draws close enough: “I’m fine.”

Arthur, of course, raises an arch eyebrow.

“I would call ‘dead’ the exact opposite of ‘fine’,” he replies, “but whatever you say. We need to keep moving.”

Em tries very hard to remember why, exactly, he didn’t eat Arthur when they first met? Anyone?

“We should be fine,” Gwen assures him as they continue their little trek. “Uther stays in that conference room until all hours. I can’t imagine he’d leave this early.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” Arthur cuts in. “I just don’t want anyone to decide they want to have a conversation with us in the middle of the—”

“Arthur! Gwen!”

Arthur closes his eyes and says, very quietly, “Fuck.”

Em turns a beat after his human companions to see a third person, brown hair grown long, eyes sparkling, a wide grin on his face…and a semiautomatic slung across his back.

_This could be very not good._

_No, really?_ Morgana asks sardonically. The humming has faded off.

Arthur immediately puts on a smile and greets the newcomer. “Gwaine. I hear they’ve let you off the leash?”

“Officially off probation as of today,” Gwaine confirms, reaching back to run his fingers lovingly over the weapon on his back. “Finally get to play with the big guns again.”

“And we’re all appropriately terrified,” is Arthur’s dry response. Gwaine waves him off.

“Ah, no worries. Unless you’re harboring a nest of zombies under my nose you’ve nothing to fear from me.”

Gwen’s smile starts to look very forced. For his part, Em keeps his eyes to the ground and his body angled away from the others, breathing getting shallow. Maybe Gwaine won’t notice that he’s here.

“So I was thinking, since I’m off duty, you could make good on that drink you owe me,” Gwaine’s saying.

Em doesn’t need to look to know Arthur’s shaking his head. “Sorry, you’ll need to find someone else to pickle you in alcohol tonight. Rain check, all right? I need to see my father before curfew kicks in.”

Gwaine sighs. “Always something with you, isn’t it? Don’t think you can cheat me out of a cheap cider, Pendragon, I’ll have you know I have the memory of an elephant when it comes to these things.”

“Never doubted it.” He sounds wry, amused. Em wonders if it’s just his own paranoia putting strain underneath the words.

“It’s good to see you, Gwaine,” Gwen says sincerely. Em glances their way just as Gwaine is nodding to her, grinning—and meeting Em’s eyes on the way.

Just like that, his threadbare invisibility cloak falls to bits. Gwaine’s eyebrows fly up to his hairline (Em is starting to wonder if that’s something everyone can do but him).

“Who’s the new guy? Don’t think I’ve seen you around.”

Familiar panic beginning to rise up in his throat, choking him, Em realizes distantly that the last was directed at him. He’s meant to answer it.

“I—” he begins, but is blessedly cut off by Arthur’s smooth “Potential new recruit. I wanted to introduce him to Uther, see what he thought.”

For once Em’s grateful for his interference; nerves have never done anything good for his already limited verbal capacities. Gwaine looks him over curiously. Em keeps his head down.

“Well, if your dad doesn’t scare him away, I don’t think even the deadwalkers will,” Gwaine says eventually. “What’s your name, then, new guy? So I can properly mourn your passing.”

_A little late for that one._

Gwen laughs a little, so it’s apparently a gallows humor thing from one soldier to another. But there’s still the question that needs answering, and going by the looks on both Gwen and Arthur’s faces, they don’t know if he’ll be able to do it.

He swallows a few times. “Em,” he manages, and then clears his throat. Maybe he can pull off the same trick that worked with Kara. “Sorry…not—” _Cough_. “Feeling.” _Cough_. “Well.”

Another hacking cough as he hides his face behind his elbow. Gwen’s expression has become very set, while Arthur just looks pained, and Em wonders bleakly if that was too much.

“Em, was it?” Gwaine offers him another easy smile. “Not sure how I’ve managed to miss you up ‘til now. We’re crammed like a bunch of lovely sardines in here, not that I have to tell you that.”

_Is there more than one question there? Is he suspicious? Think, think—you just have to say something normal-sounding and this will all blow over. Just say something._

“I…”

_Anything._

“I’m…”

_Sentences. Sentences would be good._

God, even his own mental voice is starting to sound like Morgana.

“I’m…easy…to miss,” he says with a shrug.

It looks like Gwaine’s going to ask another question, and Em is fast running out of improvisation— _definitely wasn’t a spy in my lifetime, then_ —but Arthur cuts in again, slinging an arm across Em’s shoulders in an unnervingly friendly way.

“He’s not wrong. Completely unremarkable. And with the brains of a particularly dense mosquito.”

_Sort of like some blond Ken doll prats I could mention, then?_

“Sure we want him with a gun in his hand, then?” Gwaine jokes, and the tension is broken amidst laughter and Em’s own painful-feeling smile.

Gwaine gives Arthur a smack on the shoulder. “Well, I won’t keep you. Have fun introducing this one to your father.” He winks conspiratorially at Em. “Just remember—if you can get past Uther, nothing’ll scare you anymore. Ever again.”

Em nods and lets Arthur steer him away while Gwen says her goodbyes.

“ _Easy to miss_?” Arthur hisses in his ear. “Easy to—you couldn’t have thought up anything more creative than— _honestly_ —”

Em wants to say something scathing and intelligent, and he’s gearing himself up for it too, but then he realizes Arthur is shaking and— _oh, fuck’s sake, is he actually trying not to laugh right now?_

“I…hate…you,” he says with all the passion he can muster, but that only makes Arthur lose it more, hand pressed to his mouth in a failing struggle to keep the helpless laughter from escaping.

“And the coughing,” he wheezes. “Jesus, Em, how are you still alive?”

_I’m not, you arse._

He almost says it, too, almost reminds Arthur what he is and why he’s here. But he’s feeling really stupidly warm right now—leeching Arthur’s body heat, no doubt—and this is the least pissed he’s seen Arthur look since…well, ever. So he relaxes and decides to be magnanimous instead.

Gwen catches up with them with a perplexed, “Why is Arthur asphyxiating?”

Em shrugs at her. But he’s grinning.

Of course, the grin melts right off his face the second Arthur sobers and drops his arm, which is to say the second the HQ building comes into view. It’s a massive, imposing structure, paint long since stripped away to reveal the crumbling brick beneath. The windows are as tall as a person, and Em thinks they probably looked really impressive with all the sunlight shining through them, but they’re boarded up now, some with wood and some with metal sheets.

“Nice…décor,” he says, but the joke falls flat. Gwen’s mouth tightens.

“Well, no point standing around, is there?” she says.

This is apparently Arthur’s cue to stride forward and press some buttons on a panel hooked up next to the door, and then say something into the panel that Em can’t catch, and holy shit, Arthur’s father actually spends all of his time boarded up in a military shelter. He feels like this explains a lot.

Whatever mysterious password Arthur uttered does the trick, because the door swings open and he gestures for them to follow over his shoulder.

Gwen grips Em’s arm in a comforting squeeze and nudges him on.

At least he manages to get up the front steps without making an arse of himself. _Guess those damned escalators at Heathrow were good for something after all._

There’s an honest-to-god working elevator inside the building, which is such a beautiful sight it would bring tears to Em’s eyes if his tear ducts still worked. No more fucking stairs for now, at least.

“Generators,” Gwen explains in an undertone as they step inside. Em isn’t really listening at that point though, too caught up in shiny buttons and working lights and mechanics to even feel petrified about his probably imminent fate.

Arthur watches him for all of half a second before rolling his eyes.

“Tenth floor,” is all he says.

Em punches the button and it lights up and he’s fairly sure that if he can just get Uther to listen to him, he will now be able to die happy.

“This used to be a hotel, if you can believe that,” Gwen tells him as the elevator slowly lurches upwards. “For fancy business types. Uther repurposed it.” She offers him a tiny grin. “It even has a pool out back.”

Arthur snorts, causing Gwen to amend her statement. “Well, not exactly a pool anymore. More of a pond, really, at this point. No one’s cleaned it in years, so it’s sort of disgusting. There’re always a few people who swim in it anyway, though, when it gets hot.”

A _ding_ from above and Gwen stops rambling.

The elevator doors open to a darkened hallway lined with thick wooden doors and ornate handles. Arthur walks briskly ahead until they reach the last.

Hand on the handle, he hesitates. Turns back.

“Last chance to back out,” he says.

Em doesn’t even pause this time before shaking his head. “Not…a chance.”

Arthur huffs a laugh. “Fine. But this time let Gwen and I do the talking.”

Em nods. It’s bizarre, he thinks, how calm he’s feeling now, when by all accounts he should be scared out of his skull. Hell, the hunger alone should have him crawling out of his skin by now.

Maybe it’s just the sheer number of impossible things he’s seen and done lately, but he’s stopped assuming the world order as he knew it is still intact. Morgana was right. They’re changing everything. And he likes to think that they can’t’ve come this far just to have it all end here.

One way or another, he’s going to make Uther listen.

Arthur pushes the door open and walks in first. Em’s right behind him, and Gwen brings up the rear.

_A zombie and two heavily armed humans walk into a room…_

“Father,” Arthur announces himself. “A moment?”

There are at least three different light fixtures in the ceiling of the spacious office, all the furnishings good solid wood from what Em can see, and yet only one is switched on. It’s hanging directly over a long conference table, which is covered in maps and blueprints and other assorted papers.

A man is bent over the table. He looks up when Arthur speaks, meets his eyes over the length of the table.

Em is struck by a sudden, wrenching contradiction.

Because Uther Pendragon, Em decides immediately, looks like _exactly_ the sort of person who would shoot him on sight, whether he can manage a few mangled syllables or not. There’s a lot roiling in those icy eyes of his, but sympathy is not one of them.

And then there’s the fact that this is Morgana’s father. Which sort of makes Em want to drop to his knees and beg forgiveness for being the monster that he’s tried so hard not to be, die right here in this room with the knowledge that he’s at least attempted to clean his filthy conscience.

“Arthur.” Uther greets his son. He inclines his head in Gwen’s direction. “Guinevere.”

“Sir,” Gwen says evenly.

Uther’s eyes fall on Em.

“Who is this?”

There are deep lines etched into his face, thrown sharply into relief by the sparse light. They’re not the lines of age, just like the dark circles under his eyes weren’t put there by lack of sleep. Em looks to Arthur and then back to Uther and figures there’s no way in hell Uther is as old as he looks.

But then, maybe that’s what losing a child does to you. Em swallows.

“Em,” he says. “Sir.”

Arthur and Gwen are giving him near-identical panicked looks, and Em knows he’s going off the rails here by speaking, he does, he just—

“What was so urgent?” Uther is asking, and Em can hear Arthur drawing breath for some no doubt well-rehearsed speech, trying to lay the foundation for Em to have a fighting chance of not getting shot before he can so much as speak, but Em cuts in. Because he’s clearly suicidal.

“Me.” He clears his throat. “I…have news.”

“News,” Uther repeats, flat.

Em nods. “Boneys…are…coming.” Too late he realizes he should’ve called them skeletons like everybody else living seems to, but the ‘s’s would’ve fucked him over anyway so there’s nothing to be done.

“Skeletons,” Arthur clarifies, shooting him a warning look. “We’ve heard that an army is gathering to attack the compound.”

“An army,” Uther repeats again, sounding less impressed by the second. “Arthur, what foolishness is this?”

“It’s true, Father. Just listen.”

Pressing his advantage, Em prattles on and hopes Uther won’t notice how long it’s taking him to string words together. “They’ve…killed…the deea—” Oh _fuck everything_ , honestly, he does _not_ have time for this.

“The deadwalkers,” interrupts Gwen. “Apparently the skeletons have turned on their own.”

“I fail to see how this is a problem.”

 _Did you somehow miss the part about the army?_ Arthur must be thinking along the same lines.

“We have reason to believe that they’re massing now, looking for another food source.”

“Corpses do not possess brains,” Uther says coldly. “They merely try to deprive us of our own. They do not think. They certainly don’t strategize. Where are you getting this information, Arthur? Him?” He turns on Em. “What did you say your name was again?”

Em tries to swallow his fear back down. “There’s…something else,” he presses desperately. “The dead…they’re—”

Uther cuts him off. “I asked you a question. Who are you?”

“Father,” Arthur begins, but Uther barrels right over him.

“Your new friend can speak for himself. Well? Where are you getting your information?”

There’s nothing else for it. Em takes a deep breath and reaches up, too quickly for someone to stop him, and pulls down his hood.

He has to give Gwen credit for her makeover—even then, it takes a few seconds for the reality of what he’s seeing to sink in for Uther. It’s the eyes that do it, Em knows, the cold blue that no human child could ever be born with.

Uther has a pistol in his hand before Em even knows what’s happening, and at the click of a safety going off he prepares himself for the end of it.

But it doesn’t come.

“Please don’t, sir,” Gwen says from Em’s side. She has her own gun in hand, and it’s pointed straight at Uther.

“Guinevere.” Uther speaks in calm, even tones. His eyes never leave Em, and his finger doesn’t leave the trigger. “Have you lost your senses?”

“You oversaw my training yourself. You know I won’t miss at this distance, Uther, so please don’t make me do it.”

“You won’t shoot,” Uther says, still so calm.

“I’m not sure what I’ll do,” Gwen replies softly.

Uther doesn’t lower his gun, doesn’t move it one inch down from Em’s face, but he doesn’t fire either.

“Arthur,” he grits out. Icy with suppressed rage and disappointment. “What have you done?”

“He’s telling the truth,” Arthur says quietly.

“How do you know that?”

“He saved my life, Father.”

A ringing silence. It’s loud enough to be painful, loud enough for Em to wish he were back down on that crowded street.

Arthur breaks it first, rambling like Em has never heard him do before. “I was out cold when the others were killed, completely defenseless. Em could have killed me without any problem, he could have—”

“ _He_?” Uther spits, outrage finally breaking past his calm façade. Arthur doesn’t even slow down.

“Instead he covered me in blood so the others wouldn’t know what I was. He kept me safe, he put his neck on the line for me and then he _let me go_.”

Uther is staring at Em still, loathing writ deep in every single line of his face, in every twitch of his posture. And it’s not that Em blames him, it’s really not. Still. Even after years of facing down trigger-happy maniacs who wanted nothing better than to put a bullet through his skull, Em can’t remember ever facing this much sheer vitriol in one person. It’s fucking scary, is what it is.

“It got to you.” For all hatred in his eyes, Uther’s voice is soft when it comes. Soft and drenched in horrified disappointment. Arthur flinches like he’s been hit.

“He didn’t—Father, they’re changing. That’s why the skeletons have turned on the rest, it’s because they want to make peace with us!”

Em privately thinks that’s a bit of a stretch, because for all he knows Will and the security guard are the only ones who aren’t dying for a human sandwich right about now, but he’s pretty sure saying so won’t help their chances.

“We…feel,” he says when Uther makes no reply to his son. “We’re…different.”

There’s a minute of tense quiet. Uther’s naked rage is muted now, slicked over by a mask of ice. It’s almost as frightening.

“Different.” Cold and clinical. “Tell me, then, how the death of my daughter was different.”

Em sees Arthur’s knuckles go white in his peripheral vision, hands clenched into bloodless fists. Morgana inhales sharply. For his part, Em struggles to meet Uther’s eyes. It’s probably the least he owes her father, when all is said and done.

Uther doesn’t seem to care for his silence. “That’s what I thought. And what of my wife? What of Igraine? I never knew which of you monsters was responsible for her death, you know. Yet you expect me to welcome your kind with open arms, when any one of them could have been the one that took my family from me.”

 _You won’t need to look far for Morgana’s killer, at least._ Em shakes the thought away; he would throw himself on his metaphorical sword if he thought it would help, but Uther’s grief seems to have gone far beyond anything he could ease, even with his death.

“I’m…sorry,” he manages, knowing it’s dismally inadequate. Uther seems unmoved.

“You still…have family,” he tries, desperate, gaze flickering to Arthur. Uther’s stare follows his before returning to Em, mouth twisted into something sardonic and cold.

“And do you imagine that is a consolation?”

Arthur’s expression goes to stone in a way Em is starting to realize is learnt. He feels abruptly overwhelmed by loathing for this man who would see him dead, and not without justification; but he doesn’t hate him for wanting Em’s kind exterminated, and he doesn’t hate him for the gun leveled at his face either.

“I will grant that you show an unheard-of capacity for human speech,” Uther continues. “And by the same token it might be argued that you are capable of reason. It makes no difference.”

“It makes all the difference, what are you saying?” Arthur snaps, breaking out of his trance.

Uther doesn’t so much as spare his son a glance. “It changes nothing. They are monsters, Arthur, and the ability to think only makes them that much more dangerous.”

“It means we can reason with them!”

“You cannot reason with something that is not human. These things possess neither morals nor conscience. Our only recourse is to destroy them—all of them, deadwalker and skeleton alike.”

There’s a tremor in Arthur’s voice when he answers. “We can’t do that on our own. We might all die first.”

Uther meets Arthur’s eyes evenly.

“Then so be it.”

And he fires.


	14. Chapter 14

.

**_Chapter Fourteen_ **

**__ **

.

You learn things, growing up with someone. You learn to pay attention to the details.

For example, Arthur learned at a younger age than most that needling Morgana at a certain time of the month was very likely to get him shot. Some lessons you really only need to be taught once.

He learned to make himself as small as possible around his father on certain days of the year—his mother’s death date, for one, followed by her birthday and their wedding anniversary. As a child he hadn’t really understood his father’s desire to be left alone on those days, when he for one would have preferred the comfort of being near someone who had known and loved his mother as well, but ultimately that just wasn’t worth the effort. His father didn’t have preferences; he had silent commands that everyone else was expected to follow, and Arthur has always followed them in the end. And in any case, it taught him how to act around Morgana on the anniversary of Gorlois’s death.

She had raged against Uther more and more frequently as they all grew older, but Arthur has known for a long time that she was far more similar to their father than Arthur himself was.

Everything is in the details. The devil and everything else; you only need to pay enough attention to read a situation and then act accordingly.

Detail: Uther oversaw all of Arthur’s earliest lessons in marksmanship, and Uther demonstrated every lesson first.

Detail: Uther is absolute shit at poker.

Because he has a tell. Arthur noticed it after approximately his five-millionth instruction with a shotgun and he’s never forgotten it.

He sees it now, and it’s the only reason he manages to pull Em out of the way in time.

It’s all a bit of a blur there for a minute, everything coming in flashes—

Gwen, stunned even as she pulls the trigger—

Uther, fury and surprise on his face mixing with sudden pain—

And Em, half in his arms, gaping like an absolute idiot at the hole in the wall behind them as if he’s actually confused by what’s just happened.

Arthur wants to shake him until his teeth rattle, but there’s no time for that now.

“Arthur.” Gwen’s fingers dig into his arm, and her voice is trembling. “Arthur, we need to go. Now.”

That’s when Arthur looks to his father again.

Uther is propping himself up against the conference table, blood oozing from his right arm, face contorted. His gun is on the floor.

It was a shot to disarm, not to kill. Arthur wonders if he could’ve managed that in Gwen’s place.

Swallowing past the lump in his throat, fighting every instinct he’s had since birth to go back, help his father, make all of this right, Arthur turns for the door and hauls Em along with him. They’ll need to sound the alarm themselves, as it seems diplomacy has failed them just as spectacularly as he should have expected it to.

“Those things killed your mother!” Uther snarls from behind them, all calm lost. “Your sister!”

Arthur hesitates.

As has become unfortunate instinct when Morgana’s death is mentioned, his eyes flicker to Em. Em, who is watching him like he knows exactly what he’s thinking. There’s a well of guilt there, in his eyes and the set of his mouth—it’s not enough for forgiveness, not yet, but it’s enough to make Arthur want to believe him when he says they’re changing.

“I don’t remember my mother very well,” he hears himself say, turning to face Uther one more time. “But I knew Morgana. She died fighting; she died protecting every last person inside these walls. She would not want them slaughtered without reason. Not when there might be another way.”

It’s his first act of open defiance, and the shock is ugly on Uther’s face. Arthur imagines it’s not much more attractive on his own.

But it only lasts a moment. In a move Arthur has become too familiar with over the years, Uther’s face shuts down completely. Not an iota of emotion or warmth remains.

“It seems I have lost my son as well,” he says.

He’ll feel the pain of that later, he thinks, agonize over it once the adrenaline and the immediate crisis have worn off. As it is…as it is, it’s just one more thing. It’s always just one more damned thing.

Arthur sets his jaw, turns his back, and shuts the door between them.

.

Em’s not entirely clear on what the hell just happened, but he’s pretty sure Arthur saved his life. Again.

He figures he can dwell on that later, once he’s not being dragged headlong back down the hallway with a speed that suggests Satan himself is jogging merrily behind.

Arthur doesn’t keep heading for the elevator though, instead ducking right through an unassuming door Em hadn’t noticed the first time around. He has just enough time to register _stairs, lots of them_ before Arthur is yanking him along again, Gwen ahead of them both.

“Come on, come _on_ ,” Arthur urges him under his breath, and Em doesn’t bother wasting his with a protest. Because stairs have never been his strong point, but right now they’re passing under his feet surprisingly quickly. Maybe the trick is to not think about it.

_Well, not thinking does seem to be your specialty._

_Really, Morgana? Now?_

_Why not? After all, if you don’t get a move on, we’re not going to have much more quality time together._

Em doesn’t dwell on that either, partly because there’re too many damn stairs for him to be thinking about anything else. But solid floor is approaching, and with it another door, which Gwen shoves open. Their intrepid little trio stumbles out onto the street, panting but otherwise no worse for the wear.

Two point five seconds of relief. That’s all they get, just long enough for Em to wonder what the next step is.

Two point five seconds and then the siren starts going off.

It’s a high, tuneless wail, piercing enough that even Em’s eardrums feel like they’re bleeding, a scream of warning that makes him feel like he’s standing in a spotlight. The blood has drained from Gwen’s face.

“Arthur, is that—”

Arthur nods grimly. “The breach alarm. Damn it, he wants us caught before we can do anything else—”

“Your father didn’t have a portable radio on him,” Gwen cuts in. There’s a soldier’s calm on her face, but Em sees something flickering underneath. Like a moth trapped in a glass jar. “He couldn’t have sounded the alarm so quickly.”

Em cottons on a second before Arthur does, and it feels like the bottom of his stomach dropping out.

_No, no, no—_

Arthur’s hand goes for his machete even as he opens his mouth to confirm what they all know.

“Then—”

That’s when the screaming starts.

_We’re too late._

.

Arthur makes an immediate beeline for the source of the screaming, Gwen and Em bolting after. They reach the courtyard in time to see the breach that has the alarm shrieking well over every human sound being made.

“Oh my god,” Gwen says softly.

The gates are still closed, that’s what doesn’t make sense at first— _the gates are still closed_ , how could anything have got in?

And then, squinting in the dim evening light, Em sees a mass of wriggling shapes covering the gates in question. One of them emits a spine-tingling roar and Em doesn’t need to look closer.

Boneys. Every last one of them, from the looks of it, every last hopeless bit of rotted humanity crawling up and over the gateway like a horde of spiders, leaping to the ground as soon as they can do so without exploding into gooey bits on impact. There are people everywhere all of a sudden, brandishing blades and firearms, but between the spare lighting and the set sun it’s too dark to aim easily, and the boneys use more than just their eyes when they’re on the hunt. Em knows from experience—all of them rely on more than one sense; it’s what gives them one of their biggest advantages over the humans.

As if woken up by that reminder that he’s no longer one of them, the hunger stirs hopefully in his chest. Suggests how easy it would be, here and now, with everyone so distracted, to eat again. He has no more of Morgana’s brain left, but he could get some off someone else, satisfy the monster inside while in another person’s memories he could pretend to be human again. It would be so easy.

“Em!”

He blinks. Gwen has edged closer to the chaos in front of them, but Arthur is looking at him with the frustration particular to someone who’s just said the same thing five times.

“You need to get out. Now. Take the back way into the woods and keep your head down until this is over.”

Em blinks some more, uncomprehending.

“You should go,” Arthur says in a strained tone. “They’re after your kind now too, aren’t they?”

_So easy. So damn easy._

He doesn’t even spare a second for that thought. Instead he shrugs.

“I’ve seen…the woods…already.”

Arthur lets out a surprised huff of a laugh, eyes lighting up.

“You’re insane,” he says.

And he’s probably right. Probably definitely right. Because when Arthur pitches headfirst into the fray, Em’s right behind him.

The first one’s ambitious, has got farther in than most of its brethren. Gwen’s put three bullets into its skull before it comes within five feet of them. Arthur’s doling out headshots like a true professional. The cacophony is deafening, screams and warning shouts and inhuman roars and gunshots and tearing flesh and over it all, that damned siren still screeching at anyone too stupid to know yet what’s going on.

Em really wishes he had a fire extinguisher right about now. But when his first boney looms in front of him, popping into his field of vision like a deranged jack-in-the-box, the machete Arthur tosses him does the job. One hack-and-slash with all of Em’s strength behind it is enough to sever head from neck and leave both pieces flopping ineffectually on the ground.

A gunshot echoes close, too close for comfort, and a bullet clips his ear— _what the fuck_ —Em whips around, looks into the face of the boney that’s mere inches from his face, apparently stunned by the hole that’s just been put into its head. Another swing of the machete finishes it, and by the time Em turns back he can’t see whoever fired the shot.

Somewhere a man screams in agony, the cry cut off without warning. Em shudders.

_This is going badly._

_No shit_ , Morgana says, grim.

Heavy footsteps from behind draw his attention; Em brings the machete up instinctively and whirls to face the latest attacker, but it grabs his wrist before he can swing and hauls him off to the side of the worst of the melee.

“Chilllll,” it mumbles. Em lowers his arm.

“Will?” he says in disbelief.

“Caaaame…to…hhhelp,” Will says.

Now that he’s paying attention, he can see his fellow members of the undead threading through the human crowd (denizens of which are looking more confused by the minute, but as the deadwalkers are attacking the same enemy they are, nobody has time to be overly concerned at the moment).

Em looks to Will, who shrugs.

“Fffffight…with…hhhhumans. Whyyyy…not. Fffffucked…anyyywayyy.”

Em chokes on a laugh, sobering as Will holds out a hand.

“Good…lllluck,” he slurs.

Em grips the offered hand tightly.

“Don’t…die.”

Will just gives him that look he’s so perfected before nudging past and back into the fray. Some of the others cover him, protecting his reentry into the fight. And it’s not their fight, Em realizes, or at least it didn’t have to be. They’re choosing this, every one of them.

Just like he chose Arthur.

Maybe they can turn this around after all. Assuming they all survive the night, that is.

Em doesn’t think he could’ve been terribly lucky in life, given his present condition, but luck’s all he has to pin his hopes on now. So he does.

At least until the voice comes into his head.

It’s not the dimly familiar undertone of his own mental monologues, nor is it Morgana’s acidic tones. This—this is like nails on a chalkboard, a hideously high-pitched shriek somehow forming itself into words.

 _YOU_ , it says, loathing packed into the syllable. _YOU BEGAN THIS_.

Dread like ice water in his gut, Em turns to face the five boneys that have detached themselves from the fight and are watching him now with their dark, soulless eyes.

 _YOU BEGAN THIS_ , they say again. _IT WAS YOU. TRAITOR TO YOUR KIND_.

The voice drops into a roar from the first boney, and the others follow.

Em doesn’t need words to translate that, and he doesn’t need telling twice.

He runs.

.

Chaos.

Arthur’s always had a skill for operating within it, fluid and focused when the rest of the world goes jagged and hysterical; it’s what makes him so good at his job.

Even for him, this is a new level of fucked up—skeletons crawling over the gates like something out of a nightmare ( _not going to think about what happened to the guards outside, can’t think about that now_ ), people flooding the streets in an angry exodus, drunk on fear and driven by the urge to fight to protect their families and their home ( _what if some of the skeletons have got past us, into civilian areas—no, can’t think about that now_ ), a war that’s always been so firmly _outside_ now brought decidedly inside. Hell in a handbasket, delivered straight to his front door with a cheerful bow perched on top.

Even so. Arthur does what he always does, what he does best: He compartmentalizes, he grits his teeth, and he starts decapitating things.

“On your six!” Gwen shouts over the din, and Arthur swings in that direction without thinking about it. (The resulting screech of a distinctly nonhuman kind, followed by an equally distinctive thud, is satisfying to hear.) It helps immeasurably, having her at his side, knowing she has his back. Most of their team is gone now, but they’re still here. They’re still fighting.

Ichor coats his hands and face, the smell of it filling his nose, the acid taste of it on his tongue. Which is what comes of hacking off skeleton heads. It’s the closest thing they have to blood, and it’s going to be a bitch to clean. Assuming he gets out of this in one piece, Arthur is going to forgo the laundry and just burn everything he’s wearing.

“ _Behind you_!”

He doesn’t know where the shout comes from, or who shouts, but when Arthur turns around there’s a skeleton’s jaws inches from his face, yawning open like the mouth of hell.

He brings his machete up too late, the skeleton smacking it away like an irritating insect before grabbing his other wrist so hard he hears bones creaking. Its head dives in, teeth going inexorably for his throat—

—and then it’s falling on top of him, more ichor oozing sluggishly into his clothing. The smell is enough to make him want to gag, but gagging at least means he’s alive for the moment.

A hand reaches down to help him up. Arthur shoves the corpse to the side and takes it, realizing only after he’s on his feet that it’s really a shade too pale to belong to a person.

He stands and a deadwalker is standing in front of him.

Arthur drops the hand like it’s—well, like it’s a dead thing. The deadwalker looks unimpressed.

“You’rrrrre…wwwwelcome,” it says before vanishing into the madness around them.

And that’s when Arthur realizes that _he sees fucking dead people_.

The zombies are fighting the skeletons.

This has the unfortunate side effect of causing a lot of the human participants in the fight to pause in their hacking and slashing, gaping at the spectacle with open mouths.

“Who do we shoot?” a women to Arthur’s left murmurs, sounding lost.

Ten feet away he watches a pair of deadwalkers tag-team a skeleton, one bashing its neck repeatedly with a rock, the other tugging mercilessly at its head until it detaches from the rest of the body.

“The skeletons,” Arthur says decidedly. Then, raising his voice, “Leave the deadwalkers be! Focus on the skeletons!”

That seems to wake everybody up, and the fighting resumes. Except this time, Arthur thinks with a completely inappropriate note of giddiness, the human side might actually have a chance at surviving it.

And then there’s the other thought, mostly buried to allow for concentration on not dying, but there all the same:

_Em wasn’t lying._

“Arthur!”

Gwen’s voice again. Arthur looks up just in time to keep her from knocking them both over.

“Arthur, look—”

Arthur does, and immediately wishes he hadn’t. Em’s running away from the fight, five or six skeletons at his heels. His stomach drops sickeningly.

He looks to Gwen and she nods.

“Go. Assuming the deadwalkers stay on our side…” She swallows. “Well, one person won’t make a difference anyway, if they’re not.”

Arthur puts a hand on her shoulder until he gets a grim smile. And then he too is running like the hounds of hell are snapping just behind.

.

Em’s running faster than he ever has in his life and death combined. His feet are slapping the pavement, buildings and stray people going by in a blur as he darts down alleys and between buildings, trying to shake off the boneys. It’s not doing much other than to piss them off, if the increasing volume of their roars is any indication.

The headquarters building looming up in front of him feels like a sign from God, because this whole running thing isn’t going to keep him alive much longer. He might have more of a shot in a smaller space.

The door is open. Em doesn’t even think about it before running inside.

In retrospect, he really should have thought about it.

He goes immediately for the stairs, because even his architectural archnemesis is better than waiting for the elevator to start while murderous boneys breathe down his neck, and takes them two at a time. It's easier than it’s ever been, but he figures that’s just the adrenaline brought on by the fact that he can _smell_ the fetid, rotting breath of the things behind him.

_You know, I’m not sure you’ve thought this through._

**_Really_** _not the time, Morgana._ A clawed hand passes close enough to tear the hem of his jeans. He runs faster. _Where the hell have you been?_

_Well, if that’s how you’re going to be, then never mind. But don’t say I didn’t warn you._

He ignores the warning in favor of _running for my life, thanks, I don’t have time for your harbingers of gloom_. It’s only when he’s actually pushing open the door with ROOF ACCESS emblazoned across it that he remembers, belatedly, just who they’d left behind here.

The bullet has gone through his shoulder before he even registers that Uther’s standing in front of him.

His knees hit the ground; there’s no time for any last words, any last thoughts—he’s caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place as Uther’s stony face looms above, gun pointed right between his eyes in an uncanny mirroring of Arthur’s in that bedroom yesterday. A million years ago.

Except this time Em makes sure to look him in the eye.

The gun goes off and he flinches. Then he realizes that generally speaking the dead do not flinch, which must mean he’s still—and _then_ he notices the struggle going on in front of him, is scrambling to his feet before it’s even properly computed.

One of the boneys has leapfrogged over him in favor of getting to the man with the gun, the rest having followed its lead.

Teeth sink deep into Em’s wounded shoulder and he swings frantically; the teeth loosen. Apparently he was wrong about all of them being mindless followers. Two more detach themselves from the throng around Uther and roar in his general direction, which would be as good an indication as any that he ought to be running. If Uther and three other boneys weren’t squarely between him and the door.

They’re on him before he can think strategy, and then it’s just desperate swings and the hope of connection as he’s backed, slowly but inexorably, toward the edge of the roof. He’s even starting to breathe heavily. A bad habit picked up from hanging around humans too much, no doubt.

A skull goes flying. The others bellow their rage, voices icy in his head.

One leaps at him and Em barely ducks in time. He doesn’t dare turn around to watch it careen over the edge, not while a third is patiently waiting for him to drop his guard. All he can do is keep the machete at the level of his stomach like Arthur had taught him and wait until it makes a move.

Still, out of the corner of his eye he can see the other battle happening on the opposite side of the roof. Even with one arm out of commission Uther fights with the precision and skill of a trained professional. He doesn’t have Arthur’s grace, that way his son has of nearly dancing around a battlefield, but his bullets hit their mark all the same.

If they weren’t, you know, mortal enemies and all, Em would probably admire the man.

Apparently thinking along similar lines, Em’s boney speaks again.

_YOU WOULD CHOOSE THESE SACKS OF FLESH OVER YOUR OWN KIND?_

Em can see it tensing to pounce like some kind of wildcat, pausing only to hear his answer. He could lie, he figures, maybe bank on the hope that boneys are forgiving toward their wayward flock or whatever the hell they’re under the impression he is.

 _Or_ he could just do what comes naturally—something that, more than anything else, feels like a piece of his living self that was too damn stubborn to die—and flip two fingers toward the thing ordering him around.

_Please. Is that even a question?_

“They _are_ my kind,” he says, looking the boney square in the empty eye sockets.

And he even believes it as he charges, swinging the machete for all he’s worth, putting his full weight behind it. Even as he sees the thing dodging, the blade glancing off its spinal column. Even as the machete is ripped from his grip and tossed to the grass below. Even as fingers like claws tighten, viselike and cold, around the back of his neck and Em knows he’s utterly fucked.

The boney actually lifts him a few inches off the ground. Em can feel its fingertips puncturing the skin of his neck as the rotten smell of it fills his nose. Distantly he wonders if it will throw him off the roof and watch dispassionately as its friends rip his broken, still conscious body to shreds. Or if it will just incapacitate him here, rip his throat out and break his bones and leave him to wither. He doesn’t know how long he’ll survive in either case, doesn’t particularly want to find out.

 _But then_ , he thinks as the grip tightens, _that’s the price you pay for siding with the underdogs._

 _YOU CHOOSE THEM_ , the boney says.

“That’s…right.” Em’s vision is starting to go black and spotty around the edges as the skeletal grip tightens further, but somehow forming words has never been simpler. “And…I’m proud…of that.”

_And I wouldn’t change a thing._

He closes his eyes—and a gun goes off.

The fingers around his throat slacken and he drops to the roof, disoriented. The boney lands beside him, a hole perfectly centered in its skull.

Arthur stands behind it, his gun still smoking.

Em stares at him like an idiot.

“You…followed me,” he says numbly.

Arthur raises an arrogant eyebrow. “Of course. Clearly, you can’t be trusted to look after yourself.”

He offers a hand. Em takes it and hauls himself to his feet.

.

“Arthur.”

Arthur stiffens.

By the time he’d reached the roof his father had made short work of the skeletons surrounding him, and had seemed content to catch his breath while the last in turn made short work of Em.

He supposes it was too much to hope for, that Uther would be willing to let this go.

Wordlessly he turns. The gun in his father’s hand is pointed at his head, and even at this distance Uther wouldn’t miss, but Arthur knows there isn’t a single bullet there that’s meant for him.

“Move,” Uther says.

“No,” Arthur replies.

Em swallows behind him with an audible clicking noise; he’s close enough that Arthur can feel his breath coming short and sharp with adrenaline. Arthur’s own breathing is steady, as is Uther’s. It’s a skill they’ve honed through years of a prolonged apocalypse.

They’ve honed many such skills, Arthur knows. Lessons that have been as much a part of his schooling as maths and firearms: Shut yourself down. Mitigate potential loss by forming attachments to as few people as possible. Trust only that they will all die in the end. And know that you will join them unless you make yourself better than all of them combined.

It’s a harsh way to be, but Arthur’s always known it to be necessary. It’s kept them alive.

_We’re not **living** here, Arthur. We’re surviving. And there is a difference._

Morgana’s words come back to him like a slap in the face, so clear it feels like she’s standing behind him. He half-turns, but there’s only Em, standing there with fear and fire in his eyes.

The message there is clear enough: Em doesn’t plan on going down without a fight. And it startles Arthur to realize that there’s more life in a deadwalker’s eyes right now than he’s seen in Uther’s for a long, long time.

Arthur gives him a tight nod. It’s meant to be reassuring, but he’s not sure if it succeeds.

The sound of a gun being reloaded reaches his ears.

“Arthur,” Uther warns. “Get out of the way. It’s one of them. You’ve seen what’s happening.”

The block of ice around his tongue abruptly melts.

“What’s _happening_?” he repeats. “I’ve seen what’s happening down there. Have you?”

Uther scowls, but Arthur doesn’t give him a chance to retaliate.

“The deadwalkers are fighting.”

“I am aware—”

“They are _fighting the skeletons_.”

Uther’s face spasms. “You would lie to protect this—thing?”

“I’m not lying,” Arthur says, trying to keep his tone calm. “You can look for yourself. They came out of nowhere and joined our side; the last I saw the odds were in our favor—doesn’t this prove that they’re changing?”

“All this proves is that you would side with the creatures that destroyed our family,” Uther says coldly. “I have nothing more to say.”

Arthur feels a telltale stinging in his eyes and blinks it forcefully away. “Father—”

Out of the corner of his eye he sees it—a skeleton stirring on the ground, readying itself to pounce, its skull chipped but not blown through. Not dead.

He’s opening his mouth to shout a warning when it attacks.

It clings onto Uther’s back like a demonic monkey, roaring its fury while Uther stumbles backward under its weight. Too close to the edge.

Arthur lifts his gun, pulls the trigger, and—nothing.

He’s out of ammunition.

But Uther still has his gun. Arthur’s already running across the rooftop, ice freezing in his chest, wondering why the hell his father isn’t _using_ the damn thing—

“Shoot it!” he shouts, desperate.

Uther looks him in the eye. Time seems to slow.

“No,” his father says.

The boney sinks its teeth into Uther’s throat like a fine meal, appearing to savor the blood that gushes forth. Arthur thinks he screams, but he’ll never know for sure.

And then they’re gone, tipping backwards over the edge of the roof, Uther and the skeleton both.

Gone.


	15. Chapter 15

.

**_Chapter Fifteen_ **

**__ **

.

Arthur doesn’t know how long he stands there useless, staring at nothing.

His father is dead. It’s too much to process all at once; he feels like his head has turned into a vacuum, filling up with a silence so loud it’s threatening to drive him mad. For as long as he can remember Uther has been the only constant presence in his life—after his mother and before Morgana, they were all each other had. And then Morgana had flung herself headlong into death’s path and it’d been the same situation all over again.

Now it’s only Arthur.

He doesn’t even flinch when Em lays a hand on his shoulder. It’s like all of his instincts have shut down.

“I’m sorry,” Em says quietly.

Arthur doesn’t say anything for a long time.

Then, finally, “He didn’t even fight.”

The words resonate as he says them, lighting a fire he hadn’t realized was there until this moment. Rage is bubbling up in his throat, acidic; it’s going to choke him if he doesn’t let it out _right now_. “That bastard, he didn’t even _try_.”

Em hesitates. “He loved you,” he says at last.

_Not enough._

Arthur stops himself saying it aloud, but it makes no difference. His rage deflates as quickly as it appeared.

He knows Em’s right. He knows his father loved him, even in confusion and anger and mindless vengeance.

But he also knows, now, that he alone was never enough to fill the hole Igraine left behind. He knows the last of the light left Uther’s eyes after Morgana was killed. And he knows, if he’s being brutally honest with himself, that his father had been acting like one already dead for a while.

“What I don’t understand is why everyone would rather die than fight with me.”

He regrets the words the second they’re out of his mouth, but that doesn’t make them any less true. Arthur is willing to fight until the day he dies if it will keep his friends and his city safe, but if no one else is willing to do the same…

_Most days I don’t even remember why we’re bothering to fight._

Maybe Morgana was the smarter of them after all.

Em’s voice is startling in the silence. “I want to live.”

It’s such a non sequitur that Arthur turns to look at him. He means to ask what the hell Em is going on about, but something about the look on his face stops him.

“I want to live,” Em repeats, firmer this time. “I didn’t care anymore, I thought…I’d accepted it. And then…you.”

It’s too much for Arthur’s already overtaxed brain to handle. He rubs his forehead, trying to fend off the imminent migraine.

“What are you talking about?”

The look Em gives him in response—that ‘ _you’re an idiot, Arthur_ ’ look that he’s seen far too much of—is more painfully familiar than it ought to be.

“I…want to live. For you. If that counts…for anything.”

.

If Em were prone to making to-do lists instead of cheerfully winging everything, he’s pretty sure today’s list would not have included ‘Bare Heart and Soul to Arthur’. But such is his life.

Besides, it’s true. And Em’s definitely not in the habit of blurting out truths with that much…erm… _intensity_. But even if Uther was a vindictive bastard, he was still Arthur’s father, and Arthur’s just lost him. The last of his family.

Em’s not sure anything he can say will ease that pain, but if there’s even the slightest chance, then his own personal embarrassment doesn’t even begin to factor into it.

But Arthur turns away, leaving Em with no idea how to interpret the resulting silence.

“We need to get off this roof,” he says at length. He’s already making strides toward the door; Em’s hurrying after him when it opens.

They both freeze.

The boneys make no sound as they pour through the doorway—three, four, five, like shadows with claws in the dreary light. Em starts backing away slowly, sees Arthur doing the same. Not that it matters. There’s nowhere to run.

“Your…gun?” Em asks quietly, but Arthur shakes his head.

“No ammo.”

And he’d lost the machete to the last boney that had tried to rip his head off. Brilliant. If he’d known the thing’s mates would end up killing him five minutes later, Em thinks he would’ve just let the last one make an end of it and spared himself his latest humiliation. Ah, hindsight.

They’re backed up far enough that their heels are nudging the edge of the rooftop, but the boneys seem content to take their time. Maybe they’re being cautious because Em and Arthur managed to fend off their friends, or maybe they’re just playing with their food, but either way Em knows it’s not going to last. The fun of the hunt is nothing compared to the feeling of blood and flesh filling your mouth.

The thought sort of makes him want to be sick now, though. Strange. He hasn’t eaten in a long time but he barely feels it.

Arthur’s eyes are darting back and forth between the boneys and the door; he’s clearly attempting to map out a strategy where they both make it out of here intact. Em’s pretty sure they’re fucked, but in a show of solidarity he turns to look behind, see if maybe there’s any nearby roofs they can jump onto.

There are none. But looking down (down, _down_ ) Em realizes there is a swimming pool. He remembers something about this place being a repurposed hotel, and an idea comes to him.

It’s not a good idea. Actually, it’s phenomenally stupid.

But Arthur doesn’t seem to have anything better in mind and the boneys are advancing, so Em makes up his mind, grabbing Arthur’s sleeve to force him to look at him.

“Do you…trust me?” he asks.

Arthur’s face creases in confusion or irritation, Em has no idea which and he doesn’t care, because they don’t have time for this. So he asks again, and this time the words flow like water over rocks.

“ _Do you trust me_?”

“Yes.”

There’s no hesitation in it, which Em can marvel at later if this doesn’t kill them both.

As it is, he just says, “Hold your breath.”

“What—”

The first boney leaps at them but it’s too late; Em grabs Arthur around the middle, holds tight, and tips them both over the edge.

.

_I have to say, I wasn’t expecting that._

_I thought you’d be used to my suicidal sparks of brilliance by now, Morgana._

_I meant Arthur. I wasn’t expecting…_

_Him to actually trust me? Neither was I._

_Weren’t you?_

_I…hoped._

_Morgana…_

_Yes?_

_I’m sorry. About everything._

_I know you are._

_I know it doesn’t change anything._

_I can’t hate you for being what you are. And you can’t blame me for my choices._

_Wouldn’t dream of it._

_Good. You hit the water pretty hard, you know._

_I know. I can’t see anything, can’t feel anything…is this what happens when you die twice?_

_He’s worried about you._

_Arthur? He’s all right?_

_So it would seem. He’s trying to wake you up._

_Oh. That’s nice of him, I guess._

_You’re such an idiot—can’t you hear it?_

.

Arthur’s soaked through when he breaks the surface of the water and it’s _freezing_ , but hypothermia is the least of his concerns right now because Em pulled them off the fucking roof and broke Arthur’s fall and now he’s not resurfacing.

Fear curdling in his stomach, Arthur looks down to see a familiar red hoodie drifting near the bottom of the pool.

He dives. Em is a skinny thing, too easy to haul up past the surface. Arthur gets a good look at him, trying to calm himself down by remembering that Em’s already dead, you can’t kill someone twice—can you?

“Come on,” he mutters, “Em, come _on_ —”

.

_Even if you do wake up, everything will be different. The humans, the deadwalkers—everything will have changed._

_I hope so._

_Do you think you’re ready for that?_

_Honestly? I have no clue. But I’ve always liked to think of myself as an optimist._

_Well, I wouldn’t know what that’s like._

_Morgana—_

_Don’t worry about me. It’s time for me to go anyway._

_Oh._

_‘Oh’, he says. I suppose I couldn’t have expected anything more articulate._

_No, it’s just—I think I see a light. Is this some cliché heaven bullshit?_

_I doubt it. You’d go straight to hell._

_And I’d make sure to bow to the queen._

_Very nice. Em—_

_Yeah?_

_Take care of my brother._

_I will. I mean, I was going to do that anyway._

_Good._

_Goodbye, Morgana._

_Wake up, Em. Don’t you want to see what the new world looks like?_

.

Em wakes up to blue sky. Sunlight is streaming through the clouds, he’s waist-deep in water, and Arthur’s looking down at him with a worried expression.

“Hello,” Em says, grinning. Arthur’s face clears and he smacks him upside the head.

“You’re an utter imbecile,” he informs him. Then, more seriously, “Don’t do that again.”

“What, die? I think twice was enough.”

“Very funny.” Arthur’s trying to sound stern, but he’s grinning as well, and it’s too much temptation.

Em kisses him.

In retrospect it probably wasn’t a decision in keeping with his promise to _not_ get killed a third time. But the most bizarre thing happens—the _most_ bizarre thing in a lifetime of getting zombie-fied and voices in his head and deadwalker/human alliances, okay? Em is a _connoisseur_ of the bizarre—and Arthur actually kisses him back.

Somewhere between that first awkward ‘ _the fuck am I doing_ ’ moment and the kiss starting to get really interesting something clicks, clicks hard, and maybe Em can’t remember being alive all that well but he thinks this was what it felt like. This swooping, terrifying, brilliant sensation like getting to the top of a roller coaster and then dropping, screaming all the way down; like freefalling and having no clue whether someone’ll be there to catch you and not caring because it’s the freest you’ve ever felt.

There’s that pounding in his ears again. It sounds almost like a heartbeat.

And of course that’s when the gun goes off.

This time there’s no shock barrier—Em _feels_ it, feels it immediately, goes reeling backwards in the water and only Arthur’s hands keep him standing because holy _fuck_ , it hurts. He can’t remember the last time something hurt like this.

Arthur’s shouting at someone on the poolside, a tall black man holding a gun attached to— _is that a machete blade?_ —while the other man argues back and gestures angrily towards Em.

“Arthur,” Em manages. He’s feeling a little…off. His vision is swimming and his shoulder is on fire.

Arthur turns back to him and his eyes widen.

“That’s impossible,” he says under his breath. “You’re dead, you can’t possibly—”

Em can barely see the other man anymore, but his posture screams impatience. “Arthur, have you lost your _mind_?”

“Look at him!” Arthur snaps. “Elyan, _look_ at him—he’s bleeding!”

 _Nice of you to notice, thanks_ , Em thinks reproachfully.

And then he blacks out.


	16. Chapter 16

.

**_Chapter Sixteen_ **

**_ _ **

.

Somewhere in the city, as the chaos begins to taper off, Gwen tries to wipe blood off of her face with her sleeve. It’s already soaked; all she does is manage to smear it around.

Swearing under her breath, she’s about to tear a strip from her shirt to do it—the battle may be all but over, but it’s always better to be prepared, and if blood drips into her eyes at the wrong time she’ll be in trouble—when a crumpled napkin is offered to her out of nowhere.

She takes it from stiff fingers and turns, a thank you on her lips, but it drowns in a sea of shock.

Brown eyes stare hopefully at her from an unnaturally pale face. This is impossible. She’s dreaming, or she’s dead already.

Part of Gwen worries that speaking will break the spell, pop the fragile soap bubble of whatever dream she’s stumbled into. But a bigger part of her is practical and determined to get the worst over with quickly, so she speaks. It comes out far shakier than she would like.

“Lancelot?” she whispers.

A smile spreads across his face, and it’s like watching the sun rise.

.

Will explains the rest to him when Em wakes up, stiff in a makeshift hospital bed. Because of course—he _would_ manage to sleep through the end of the end of the world. Typical, really.

He learns that the boneys, for all their fury, were too few to fight off a combined force of rebellious zombies and very pissed-off humans. Their side took heavy losses, yeah, and they’ll be patching up the damage for a long time to come, but when all was said and done the boneys were all killed outright or driven off. Em imagines they’ll retreat back to the darkest corners of Heathrow, clawing at their faces and roaring at the walls and maybe wondering, somewhere in their hopeless minds, where it all went wrong. He doesn’t envy them, but he can’t quite pity them either. But then…

_You can’t blame me for my choices._

Maybe it’s not his place either way.

Faced with overwhelming evidence that the deadwalkers were not only not quite as dead as they used to be, but also that they were damn handy to have around in a fight, the humans didn’t immediately turn on the zombies after the boneys were gone. Apparently they’ve started setting up tents outside, both for shelter and for medical purposes. Em’s been lingering in one such tent while a Dr. Gaius, to hear Will tell it, has been practically bursting with professional interest over his newly functioning internal organs.

“He’s a…llllittle too…in—innn…”

Will’s face screws up in concentration, but after a minute he makes a frustrated noise and Em interprets.

“Interested in me?”

Will gives him a little twist of a smile. Em is reminded of how well they always communicated without words back at Heathrow; he imagines they’ll have plenty to talk about once Will gets the hang of speaking again.

“Back from the dead?”

Em twists around to see Arthur standing in the tent opening, two Styrofoam cups in hand.

“Looks like,” he answers.

Will snorts. Em retaliates by jabbing him with an elbow. Apparently Arthur hadn’t left his bedside until he was “empathetically informed” (translation: Gaius shouted and then threw him out) that Em was going to patch up just fine.

(And Em had absolutely not blushed upon hearing that bit of news. It’s this newly beating heart of his; it has no idea what it’s doing yet. It’s just pumping blood into all sorts of inconvenient places and hoping everything works out. That's Em’s story and he’s sticking to it.)

Will takes Arthur’s arrival as his cue to leave, getting up as stiffly as any old man and moving carefully towards the tent flap.

“Sssee….you,” he mumbles as he leaves.

Arthur takes the abandoned seat next to the bed and hands Em one of the cups. Em accepts with a quiet thanks.

The silence stretches like a rubber band, quickly becoming awkward.

“So,” Em says.

“So,” Arthur replies. “You look better.”

“Than a corpse? I’d like to think so.”

Arthur raises his eyebrows. “Sounding better as well. I’m not used to hearing you talk without sounding like an inebriate.”

“Very funny,” Em says dryly, but his heart has gone to pounding again. Stupid thing.

Because it is different, talking like this instead of trying to communicate via slurring and various facial expressions. And it is _lovely_ not letting Arthur dominate the conversation anymore. Being able to actually participate in verbal sparring is something Em doesn’t think he’ll ever take for granted.

“So…what now?” he asks.

Arthur’s expression darkens. “With my father gone, I’ve been more or less running things,” he says quietly. “Gwen’s been a lifesaver; we’ve been up all hours trying to figure out how this integration thing is going to work. I’m not sure what I would’ve done without her.”

Em likes Gwen. Em likes Gwen quite a lot, which is why when the words “I’m not surprised; you two seem good for each other” come spilling out of his mouth there is only sincerity in them. Really. He swears.

But Arthur looks far too amused, so Em knows he must’ve missed a step in subtlety somewhere.

“She found Lancelot, you know,” he says.

Em blinks. “Who?”

“Lance. My friend, and her fiancé—turns out he wasn’t dead after all. Well,” Arthur corrects himself, grinning fit to burst. “Not permanently, anyway.”

“That’s brilliant,” Em manages. “Really, that’s fantastic. I’m happy for her.”

“So am I. And in any case, Gwen isn’t _entirely_ my type.”

Arthur looks very pleased with himself, which instantly makes Em suspicious.

“And what would that be?”

Arthur _hmm_ s thoughtfully. “Incapable of speech and therefore unable to argue with me constantly.”

Em’s throat feels dry. “Can’t help you there, then.”

“Ah. Well then, my second choice would be extremely brave.”

“Arthur—”

“And incredibly loyal.” Arthur pins him with his gaze, abruptly serious. “And not at all like a monster.”

Forget dryness; now Em feels like he’s tried to swallow a golf ball and it’s got stuck halfway down his throat. He’d forgotten how ridiculous human anatomy was.

“Gwen checks all those boxes,” he points out once he’s got himself under control.

“So do you,” Arthur answers, and kisses him before Em can think up another protest.

And, well. If Arthur’s so determined to keep having the last word, then Em is willing to play along for the moment.

.

It’s not easy, but then nobody expected it to be. Things are awkward at first for a variety of reasons, and a handful of fights break out, but that’s to be expected when you throw former mortal enemies together and expect them to cohabitate. Arthur glares impressively at his brasher recruits and then starts training the more agile ex-zombies to make a point. Em has some very stern conversations with his fellows from the airport on the subject of _not_ antagonizing the humans, because they’re all human now. And slowly it’s all starting to work out.

(Dred and Kara have become inseparable, which Em privately finds terrifying, but they’re setting a good example for the rest so he leaves it alone.)

His own memories come back slowly, like long-lost friends drifting out of a heavy fog. They’re still blurry and indistinct, but they’re something. They’re his. He clings tightest of all to the memory of a soft, dark-haired woman with a bright laugh, who carried the smell of herbs around with her.

He still doesn’t remember his name, but it doesn’t bother him anymore.

A year to the day after the boneys climbed over the walls and the dead came back to life, a year with no new attacks, and the wall around the city compound is torn down.

“Thank God that’s over,” Arthur groans after the fact, slouching in his seat and rubbing his temples. “I don’t know why they insisted on having a speech. It’s a wall. It no longer makes sense to keep maintaining said wall when we haven’t needed it in ages. What else is there to say?”

“I’m pretty sure Gwaine just wanted an excuse to toast something,” Em muses. “But I thought you did well.”

He fiddles with the little lever and tips his seat back, admiring the way his dragon mobile catches the light and sends sparks of green and gold scattering across the plane’s interior. They try to come out here when they can, when they have time, because there’s still something oddly homey about it in spite of everything.

(On their first trip back to Heathrow, Em had fished Morgana’s letter out from under his seat and passed it to Arthur.

“Don’t ask me how I got this,” he’d said, and left Arthur to draw his own conclusions. Left the plane entirely and waited out on the tarmac for…something. He wasn’t sure what.

Arthur hadn’t come out of the plane for a long time. When he had, his eyes had been red but his posture loose, as though a weight had been lifted.

They didn’t talk about it. They probably never will, but something lightened in Arthur’s eyes after that, and that’s all Em needs to know.)

Homey or not, Em’s been slowly moving his collection back to Arthur’s mansion (which sounds incredibly posh and ridiculous, but there’s a spare room in it for all of Em’s shit, so he doesn’t mock the extravagance too much). His favorite carved dragon figurine was the first to be migrated, and he donated one of figurines to Gwen and Lancelot (aka Security Guard Guy, only Em can’t really call him that to his face without feeling awkward) at their wedding, and his dragon mug sits in Arthur’s cupboard. He drinks tea out of it every morning.

He thinks he’ll bring back the mobile last, and then it’ll probably be time to let this place go. In the meantime, though, he’s content to lay here while Arthur reads whatever book he’s got now and they both decompress.

This week’s find is massive, easily double the length of the novels Arthur usually picks up because he can talk military strategy and weapons for hours on end, but when it comes to books he has the attention span of a gnat. Em squints at the cover.

“ _The Once and Future King_ ,” he says aloud. “Bit big for you, isn’t it? Words more than two syllables long?”

“I have a gun,” Arthur informs him without looking up from the page. “And I’ll have you know that this is a classic.”

“ _Really_.” Em snatches the book out of Arthur’s hands before he can protest and reads the jacket. “‘The saga of King Arthur—’ oh, _seriously_? You would pick up a book just because it has your name in it—‘tutored by a sorcerer named—’”

Em chokes on the next word.

“Well?” Arthur sighs. “Are you finished mocking my choice of reading material for today?”

Em makes another garbled little noise. He hasn’t had this much trouble speaking in a while.

Arthur frowns. “Em? Are you alright?”

“Merlin.”

“What?”

Em looks at the book, then back to Arthur. Then back to the book.

“‘A sorcerer named Merlin.’ _Merlin_. You have got to be _joking_.”

Em laughs. He can’t help it. It’s mad, all of it is mad, and Arthur’s looking at him like he’s seriously concerned for his mental health, but that’s fine. He’ll explain later.

They’ve got nothing but time.

.

_I dream of dragons._

_Pretty damn awesome dream, if you ask me._

_Except this dragon seems to be more annoying than impressive; I get the feeling like you do in dreams, when things make perfect sense until you wake up and wonder what spectacular drugs could fuel images like that._

_So this dragon and I aren’t terribly friendly. That’s a bit of a disappointment._

_I leave him and start walking._

_There is a witch with fire in her eyes. I walk faster._

_There is a queen with a soft smile. She doesn’t seem to dislike me, which might be a first in this dream, so I smile at her but I keep walking._

_There is a king, and here is where I stop._

_He’s busy with something, bent over a table, head bowed to papers and maps and a red cape draped over his shoulders, but he looks up when I enter the room. He turns to me and the crease in his forehead disappears._

_He smiles at me. Crooked teeth ruin the illusion of the flawless golden king, but I think that just makes him look unfairly perfect._

_I open my mouth to say—something, don’t know what—but a red flower is blooming from his stomach now and I am distracted._

_It’s not a flower. It’s not—_

_The king is dying._

_He looks at me before he falls, like he’s confused. I want to scream but my throat is frozen; I want to go to him but my feet are rooted to the floor._

_He falls and he doesn’t get up._

_My feet uproot themselves._

_I start walking again._

_As fast as I can, this time, but it feels like moving through molasses, running through honey-thick syrup where every second is a hundred years. I walk, I run, and it makes no difference. Nothing changes. New faces appear, but they’re insubstantial, disappearing too quickly for me to even make note of what they look like._

_I’m looking for someone, anyway, and none of these people are right._

_Nothing is right._

_I keep walking._

_Time shifts around me. The dragons are gone, I think, and the witches too, but mourning bleeds into a blur along with everything else. Everything but the path. If I keep following the path, I’ll come home eventually. (Where was home again?)_

_I keep walking._

_Nothing is familiar anymore. I guess I haven’t been paying enough attention to keep up. I think maybe I’d still feel out of place even if I had. I’m starting to forget everything I used to remember—names and faces, eyes green and brown but never blue, I remember blue, I remember—_

_I run._

_I’m so close I can taste it, the pages flipping, the story drawing to an end._

_And then the world ends instead, and I think how fucking unfair it is that I’m not even going to get to see how the story finishes, because I’m dead now too. I’m fucking dead and I never even got to—I never—_

_I trudge and I stagger and still I move. Because this was not how the story was supposed to end._

_There’s still a path. Fuck it. It’s broken and overgrown and I don’t need it anymore._

_I keep walking. So close, so damn close, please—_

_All at once, the sun. Thumbs pressing hard into my heart, forcing it to beat again. A miracle, maybe, or the last dregs of the old world’s magic. I don’t know and I don’t care._

_I run again. I run to him._

_Maybe this isn’t the right ending either. I have no idea. But I think I’ve been dead too long to care—dead long before something came out of the shadows and turned me into a corpse in the literal sense—and I know I feel alive again now._

_Fuck the ending. I’ll tear the pages out with my teeth if it means getting to keep this._

_Crooked teeth flash at me, a wide smile I haven’t seen in a long, long time._

_I’m finally home._

.

**_End_ **


End file.
